R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
snip
This is kind of confusing. If his body was destroyed back then, wouldn’t his energy have leaked out for someone else to take at that time?
It’s worth noting that he was bound by chains forged by another god. If it’s true that he had no body until recently, I’d bet the purpose of those chains was to keep his essence bound together- no catastrophe, but with the side effect that he ‘survived’.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It was from a fan who got to chat with the lore devs at the chinese release party. It’s something he recorded from memory after the fact, so we don’t have anything verbatim to pick over, but I’m inclined to trust that he got the essential points recorded.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
4) Are all Charr in a warband always members of the same legion?
Commonly so. But remember in the personal story we can recruit members from different legions to join our warband.
Those gladium were required to change legion loyalty, however, and it was remarked to be a very unusual thing- basically you only got to do it because you had a tribune in your pocket. By the time they were part of your warband, they were the same legion as you also.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Ah… hate to say it, but almost everyone on that list were just background characters. Armorers and merchants were armorers and merchants, they just all had names in GW1. Collectors were… the closest GW2 equivalent would be heart vendors. Either way, with the exception of Reyna, Little Thom, Alesia, and Kilroy (not a henchmen but a recurring character- maybe along the lines of a dynamic event starter or ‘activity’ NPC) they just stood around and gave you stuff for other stuff.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I wasn’t counting armor sets, since the lore value there is debatable. Most of the ones who did find a spot are from books in DR, or for EotN heroes, monuments among their people.
As for graves, Alessia, Reyna, and Little Thom all have headstones at the Granite Citadel. Anton has one next to the Battle Pit in Gendarren, which raises some timeline questions. Stefan is encountered as a ghost at Grendich in the charr personal story. As you said, Gwen (though not Kieran) has a marker in Ebonhawke. And… while I might be forgetting one or two, that’s pretty much it.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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Near the other extreme, the aforementioned Destiny’s Edge, the most famous guild in recent history, only consisted of six people at its height. In GoA a group of four discusses whether they could be a guild, and the small number never comes up. So no, no minimum/maximum limits.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
ANet has said they have plans for the Ash homelands, and Blood is probably on their list too. It’s a question of when , not will ..
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I kind of question how does Razah remain unnoticed for such a long time from GW1 to GW2 timeframe. Each Henchman and Hero has some mention on their fate except for MOX and Razah.
Not even remotely true! Devona, Lina, Claude, Dunham, Zho, Lo Sha, Herta, Xandra, Kahmu, Hayda, and, as you say, MOX: none receive any mention in-game, and that’s just the Prophecies and Eye of the North group. Add in Factions or Nightfall characters like Razah, who may have never set foot on the Tyrian continent, and the list balloons further.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
What Diovid said, although the lore outline exists to accommodate the gameplay implementation. Essentially, all you need for a guild is a long-term goal your characters can agree upon and cooperate in pursuing.
As for the norn- they do have a couple loose coalitions that could be described as gangs (the Wolfborn, arguably the Sons of Svanir) but it’s worth bearing in mind that these are so much of an exception the model doesn’t even have a name. Norn culture simply does not lend itself to any formal structures. You could have a group of friends, you could spice it up by calling it a hunting party or a ‘jengi’, you could give the group a name on top of it, but it sounds in your question like you might be looking for something more structured than that.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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1.) Sylvari don’t really have anything smaller than houses or cycles, but as for norn… if you want to strain it, maybe steadings? For humans I’d probably go with guilds, or businesses, or gangs, but there really isn’t a single format that fits every level of their society, beyond family.
2.) Almost certainly the norn or humans. It’s nearly unheard of for a non-charr to get honorary warband status, asura are usually too snooty to include other races as full members of their projects, and the sylvari can’t really be applied to non-sylvari.
3.) Nope. It does depend some on the project, but there are a few mentions of krewes that draw from all three- the golem builders in Soren Draa spring instantly to mind.
4.) Yes…ish. A warband is part of the hierarchy of a legion, so they all need to be part of it. If your old warband was in a different legion, you need to jump through hoops until you’re accepted into new warband’s before you can actually join. As a partial exception, though, Ash has been known to plant their agents inside the warbands of other legions. These split loyalties would almost always result in problems if they were found out.
As for what you’re after, it really doesn’t get much better than a guild. They are fully part of the lore, if ambiguously so, and they’re the most flexible organizations that stretch across racial divides. If you really want to be part of a canon organization though… I’d suggest having them work together in the Priory or Vigil (Whispers agents typically go solo), or even have them be part of the same squad in the Pact. The Lionguard or, well, anything based in Lion’s Arch are also solid options.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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I can’t recall whether avatars were actually different beings from the gods or if they were merely local manifestations of the gods. If the latter then Abaddon’s avatar would be no more of course (or perhaps it would better to say that it got replaced by Kormir’s avatar). If the former, I could imagine that Kormir (and the other gods) would see to it that Abbaddon’s avatar would be either destroyed or locked away.
In GW2 we learned that, in Grenth’s case at least, it’s the former, the reapers being originally mortal comrades of his. I’m not certain it applies to all the gods (would raise the question of who Kormir got to volunteer for the job so quickly), but since it’s the only case we can answer for, for now that seems more likely than not.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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There was a quest that referred to the fortune teller as an avatar, and while it isn’t strictly meant in the same way as a statue avatar, it makes sense to think of her and Razakel as being Abaddon’s. An avatar’s role is primarily interacting with mortals and, besides exchanging blessings for offerings, getting them to do what their god needs them to. That describes those two exactly.
Edited to add: If I’m right, that would mean encountering one would require, first, there being another we didn’t slay in Nightfall, and also as Diovid suggested Kormir dropping the ball in letting it get away.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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We only know Jormag doesn’t corrupt the children and females of each species but instead have them sent to himself for unknown reasons.
GuildMag (Ollannach): …in Edge of Destiny it’s observed that men who go to fight Jormag’s minions and fail, return as icebroods but women don’t return at all. Is there anything more about what happens to women who fall under Jormag’s power?
ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb): I don’t think they fall as much as they are killed.
ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : Yeah, they die.
ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : The Sons of Svanir just… the way that they worship Jormag has evolved is very chauvinist, very male chauvinist, in the fact that it is a very boys-only club, they don’t really get to reanimate. The women are just slain.
ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : I think it’s less that Jormag won’t corrupt a woman and more that as they are being corrupted, the Sons of Svanir will just kill any woman who is caught being given Svanir’s gift.
ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : Jormag doesn’t care. Jormag really does not care. It’s as if ants that are going off, the red ants and the black ants, that’s nice. But the Sons of Svanir…
ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : The Sons of Svanir have a cult, it’s a religious organisation.
ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : It comes through hat funnel, the Sons of Svanir are his mechanism in the world, so therefore their beliefs, and their prejudices, have that effect.
ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : And so they kill the women.
Source
As far as children go… it’s a real simple answer, and maybe not a particularly satisfying one for you- consideration for the audience. It’s the same reason you can’t kill children in Fallout, or why the reapers in Mass Effect didn’t use horrifying baby banshees. That sort of thing pushes ratings way, way up, in theory locks out the teenage market, and also drives away a large segment of adults. That, and it’s just unsettling. I’d argue not many designers out there would be eager to do the visual design for icebrood babies.
From a lore standing, we see risen spiderlings and drakelings, branded devourer hatchlings… I’d argue that Zhaitan and Kralkatorrik clearly corrupt the young, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say Jormag does too. They exist in the universe; we just won’t ever see them in the game.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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Hopefully the expansion will have more, but the closest we have so far is this excerpt from this article almost three months ago: " The story of how charr tribune Rytlock Brimstone became the first revenant hasn’t yet been told, but at the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, he’ll have brought the knowledge of how to obtain that power to the world of Tyria, making it somewhat common knowledge. There’s no profession-specific story content planned for the expansion, but a brand-new revenant starting on their journey will not have had to visit the Mists or undergo any more of an advanced process to access revenant powers than they would for the other core professions. All that’s necessary to begin training as a revenant is knowledge of the profession, the faith and will to reach into the Mists, and an open mind. "
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Fortunately, that’s the GW1 lion statue. As long as we leave it at the bottom of the harbor, this catastrophe can clearly be averted.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It seems that you can find Fleshreavers out in the wild at Lionshead Outcrops and nowhere else.
Not really true. There’s also the cave system north of the Durmand Priory, and I don’t believe the solitary fleshreavers in Onager Bivouac or Gyre Rapids come through a portal either. Nor do Hammon’s in Blackroot Cut. Then there’s the fact that in GW1 fleshreavers weren’t associated with the Mists at all… so the fleshreavers that pop out of portals or are summoned by sigils are actually, on the broad scale, a minority.
EDIT: Now, Lionshead is notable as the only spot I know of with flesh wurms unassociated with a necromancer. I do agree something is odd about the place.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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Why? As far as we know the Pact haven’t shown any interest in moving beyond Tyria to wherever Bubbles’ territory is. Plenty of dragons here. Just because the Inquest went out of their way to acquire (as far as we know) a single specimen as part of their research, we shouldn’t assume an army that’s been occupied with fighting Zhaitan, Jormag, and Mordremoth have.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Now I was wondering, and thought I could find an answer here : could 2 tooth warband coexist at the same time ?
Yes. There was an interview before launch- charr aren’t limited in picking warband names, so they’re free to choose one already in use. Bands with the same name tend to be more competitive than usual, but for the most part it isn’t considered any odder than encountering someone who shares one of your names in the real world.
Alternatively, the merchant could belong to a Grind warband- there’s no set practice determining which order surnames are spelled out in, although it does tend to be consistent within a warband.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Good catch, drax. I forgot about Speaker of the Dead.
That said, I’m not sure the Mist War’s all that helpful. The original story was that it was a portal Balthazar opened, and while that has been… muddled… there was still dialogue up to LA’s destruction saying that the asura found the portals, not made them, and can’t control where they go. Access to those particular islands seems to be fairly easy now, yes, but it’s not an understood phenomenon, and going from the islands to the afterlives (without dying) still seems impossible.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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But the mists are unique to Tyria, in that you can actually physically go there, interact with it, even conduct scientific experiments on it (Fractals).
I want to start with this, because it’s not as routine as that makes it sound. The Fractals are the result of a once-in-a-thousand-years lab accident, and it’s still not very well understood what they are, let alone how to replicate the mistake that caused them in the first place. Beyond that, all known passages to the Mists, without dying, required either some degree of divine intervention (WvW seem to still fall under that, and likely sPvP as well) or the sacrifice of a large number of souls by a powerful mage specifically studied in such things.
So, all that said- Tyrians don’t know as much about the afterlife as you might think. The humans seem to have a grip on the general nature of the various realms their gods see their spirits to after death, but little beyond that, and I suspect no actual word from those places has been had in the roughly two and a half centuries since the gods went silent. Human beliefs might be a bit out of date.
The norn probably have a little better time of it- their havrouns, through the blessings of the Spirits, can enter the Mists at will- but beyond vague references to the spirit world or Hall of Spirits (which may or may not be the same as the Hall of Heroes), and that they think a spirit lives on only so long as it is remembered, we players have heard nothing of their beliefs. The asura seem to treat the dead as if they’re just recycled back into the Eternal Alchemy after death. I haven’t heard any charr beliefs on an afterlife; it may be that their cultural rejection of religion prohibits such belief, but that’s just conjecture on my part. The sylvari, new as they are, haven’t figured out what they believe- some have a vague notion that some part of them returns to the Dream upon death, but it’s essentially wishful thinking.
Now, as for the other part you kind of touch on- being dead is very different from being alive. Many have trouble coping with the fact that they died, and spirits also seem to have comparatively high rates of not only amnesia but also insanity . They can no longer feel phsical sensations, the few realms of the dead we visit are invariably bleak (although it is a biased sample) and that not even counting the ghosts that are trapped by unfinished business, or a curse, or the inability to move past the moment of their death, or simply being stuck in some supernatural creature’s belly. Or a box. And then there’s the ritualist, an entire profession who, among other things, routinely summoned the spirits of the dead and bound them to their service (depending on what’s going on in Cantha, that practice may continue to this day).
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Off the top of my head, there are five dialogues relating to sylvari and cold- the adventurer in the Grove who says “Hoelbrak, a city of norn, is covered in ice. It sapped my strength to be so cold all the time,” Geileis in Wayfarer who complains about the cold but doesn’t mention any negative side effects, Benerla in Wayfarer who enjoys going barefoot in the snow and is no more bothered by cold than the pine trees, Explorer Syllia who outright proclaims cold does not affect sylvari, and an ambient dialogue from Medic Yantha in Fireheart that states “We don’t really ‘feel’ the cold as you do” and “We’re more like trees, I guess. When it gets bitter cold, my limbs creak.” Interestingly, the sylvari-specific responses to Geileis (sadly not on the wiki) are “Cold? This is nothing!” and “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to the cold,” implying either way that sylvari PCs don’t mind it.
So what does it all mean? I’d say this- that sylvari have no dangerous physiological reaction to cold- no frostbite and hypothermia and such. However, they do still experience the sensation of cold, and I’d also say that just like different temperatures can affect different humans’ moods differently, so too do some sylvari have negative psychosomatic responses, such as the adventurer’s lethargy.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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So officially, it’s not clear, whether it is animals and creatures turned into plant monsters, or if it’s plants turned into creatures.
My personal opinion on the matter is that it is plant matter turned into creatures. If it was the latter, then we would see those killed by Mordrem be converted into Mordrem themselves. Much like the Risen, or the Branded.
I think it’s some from column A, some from column B. Unless the plants grew fur and bones, the mordrem wolves were clearly animals at one point, and on the other end of the spectrum the husks seem to be altogether plant. It wouldn’t be unprecedented- we see it a bit with the icebrood, and per developer interviews Primordus could corrupt creatures as well as stone if he cared to.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Sorry, didn’t mean to suggest they didn’t! Also sorry about the thread derailment, but… while I don’t think they stopped existing, their numbers do seem to have declined precipitously. It makes sense, too. Even aside from the fact that the spread of healing magic, rise of the guardian, and loss of resurrection has muscled them out of their magical niche, what makes a monk a monk is the fact they believe their powers come from the gods- healing prayers, not healing magic . With the, well, secularization of spellcasting, the available pool of new monks must have largely dried up.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Guardians are what happened to I believe paragons and monks (preservation)
Mix of paragon, monk, ritualist, and possibly a little dervish. Not to say that there might not be regular paragons and ritualists in their own lands still.
Mesmers belong to the school of Denial magic.
They did in GW1, but keep in mind that the schools no longer apply to Tyrian magic. It’s quite possible mesmers have expanded beyond what was considered Denial- actually, IIRC, pre-launch it was said that their healing skills are an example of that.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’m not sure about the timeline, but I assume this was before she got into the machine (since the machine was attached to a leyline nexus which she could only find with the Inquest data).
I’m not sure about the Thaumanova timeline myself, but when she went into the machine it was in Rata Sum- no need for a ley line. The one we found out in Dry Top was presumably either moved or built there later.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That was the best thing. I don’t think I’ve played that mission through without letting them get Burntsoul.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I thought the quaggan kame from the north like the Koda.
There are two different sub-types of quaggan. The darker ones you see in the Shiverpeaks came from the same region as the kodan. The more common lighter ones came from the same region as the krait, and presumably largos- although there’s suggestion that there’re largos in the north as well.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Weren’t they the sole reason why Charrs were able to reclaim Ascalon?
Yes, but… it’s a bit more complicated.
As simple as I can put it, the power the charr used to bring down Ascalon was granted to them by the titans, who the previously godless charr discovered and started worshiping. All four legions were converted to this new faith, and a new shaman caste rose to rule them. They weren’t kind-hearted rulers, however; they had no objection to making blood sacrifice of any charr who opposed them, and they reduced females to just a step above slaves because a rebellion was once led by one. Then, shortly after the Searing, the magical ritual that broke Ascalon’s defenses, human heroes killed the titans in front of assembled charr forces. Outrage started to spread that the charr had sacrificed so much for false gods, and the shamans simply cracked down harder and tried to come up with a new set of fake deities. Decades later, things finally boiled over when the rebels agreed to let their females take up weapons again, and three of the legions overthrew religious authority. The Flame Legion was the only one to keep the shaman caste, and they still aim to bring the other charr under religious rule. Now aggressively atheistic, the other legions hate them for it.
So, short answer: the Flame Legion is the last of the group that oppressed the charr and made them worship fake gods. For “stealing control of the charr’s destiny” and being pathetic enough to kneel before a lie, they were outcast.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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Thank you both for the quick replies! So from this I can assume that there has been no official word on this from the developers?
While they haven’t said anything about a recap being included with HoT, there have been a few official news articles summarizing Living Story content. This is the most recent, covering the broad strokes of S2, although it’s not near as good as buying and playing through for yourself if you can. If you’re on a time crunch, though, this and the S1 cutscene in-game should cover all your basics.
Naturally, we’d be happy to answer any further questions you might have afterwards!
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I think it depends on why Dhuum stood against undeath. There’s got to be more to it than that he just objected to stray bodies waltzing around. On the very, very little we’ve been given to go on, I’d conjecture it has something to do with souls, and ensuring they came to and stayed within the afterlife. We know Zhaitan was inconsistent with trapping those, and it’s possible the other dragons never bother. So, personally, I’d say Dhuum’d only be opposed to them in specific cases- at least on those grounds.
As to his hypocrisy on account of the skeletons, I’d be hesitant to apply that to his time as a god. He’d been imprisoned for over a thousand years at that point, and who knows how that might’ve changed his mind. It’s a bit like making assumptions about pre-magic Abaddon based on his behavior during Nightfall.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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The other question is, did the gods even know of the EDs existence. They seemed to be drawn to Arah, but just because it was a place of great magic, or did they know about Zhaitan.
There is alot of discussion about that. To me it seems like the gods did not know of the ED’s existence. There is some suspicion that Abaddon knew about the dragons however and that this knowledge was the origin of the conflict between him and the other gods, as you said.
I’d disagree there. Both the non-human races that we saw worship them were survivors of the last rise, the premise of Arah explorable is that the Gods stockpiled and studied relics from the last dragon rise, and with S2 we’ve learned that the most comprehensive source the Priory has on the dragons is the Scroll/Tome of the Five True Gods. Whether they knew they were actually on top of one is another matter, and I believe a dev statement before launch said they didn’t know they tapped into Zhaitan while fooling around with the Bloodstone, but we do know they knew the dragons existed.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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I think it’s clear that power or money doesn’t simply buy a Captain’s Council seat, otherwise Evon would have had one long ago. It’s the primary trading company used across all of Tyria and it’s portrayed as the largest in Lion’s Arch, the trading hub of Tyria. Evon clearly wants a seat yet he doesn’t have one. Evon was the primary arms supplier for the fight for Lion’s Arch and the Consortium are being portrayed as one the major players in the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch, neither of them are represented on the Captain’s Council.
We’ve had answers for that too. It really does boil down simply to investment of wealth or influence- BUT with the caveat that a new member can usually only be added when an old seat opens up. Even so, and even granting that some captains, like Peter and Bonny, don’t contribute anything that we know of, we still see, say, Shud bringing the gates back up, or Hao Luen keeping the overland trade flowing to fund the reconstruction. Those are valuable services, necessities for the project. I suppose it could be argued that a theoretical new council might have been able to do the same, but it would be a gamble on inexperienced unknowns against tested administrators.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Honestly, the Captain’s Council would have been thrown out in the real world.
In a real world democracy, yes, but LA isn’t a democracy. The Council isn’t accountable to the citizens. Besides, the very fact that it does consist of the rich and influential means throwing them out is the last thing you want to do during reconstruction. You can’t pin them with the blame and strip them of their status, and then expect them to foot the community’s bill.
^ Partly this. Hell, IIRC, the vote for Kiel/Gnashblade was kinda an oddball for a new captain getting put in.
Well, yeah. We weren’t technically voting for who got the seat. Citizens don’t get any say in that. What we were voting on is who got the trade deal with the Zephyrites, and only because that’s how the Master of Peace happened to want to decide things, and then the Council then gave Ellen the seat for getting the city that deal. It was more of a… shrug and a lark than a somber political process.
(As a side-side note, even the voting wasn’t exactly democratic, since the more you participated the more votes you got, making it not a measure of percentage of the population, but percentage of the population’s collective fervor. In other words, majority didn’t rule- it was set up specifically so vocal minority would rule.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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Honestly, the Captain’s Council would have been thrown out in the real world.
In a real world democracy, yes, but LA isn’t a democracy. The Council isn’t accountable to the citizens. Besides, the very fact that it does consist of the rich and influential means throwing them out is the last thing you want to do during reconstruction. You can’t pin them with the blame and strip them of their status, and then expect them to foot the community’s bill.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
To be fair, though, the 2,000 years comes from a magister who’s very candid about not paying much attention to Ogden’s classes, and she also gets some other fairly important things wrong- for instance, in that same quest, she credit’s Rurik’s death with “destroying the peace between the kingdoms of Kryta and Ascalon”.
I also think you might have been on to something earlier with the 3,000 years. While the Prophecies lore might be debunked, it wasn’t retconned- that figure may very well still be floating around in Tyria, with the humans figuring they got the details wrong but the general chronology right. Since most of the ‘facts’ bandied about before DE went after Glint were human legend, it easily could’ve been brought to Eir’s attention. Considering that Illyra’s sources don’t seem to include any hard time frames, and that in-universe the 10,000 B.E. date theory was considered something of a recent development at launch, that potentially faulty number may be the only one out there that Eir could know.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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But Mordremoth was the last dragon to wake up
That we know of. They could rise in shifts, have separate groups rising at different times. So each group is relative small but overall they can be fairly numerous. It’s not unprecedented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivQaJwFRowc .
Even setting the number aside, we know from the records of the survivors of the last rise that they fought a Zhaitan, and a Primordus, and so on. Unless there are multiple Elder Dragons who go by the same name and exhibit the same powers, we’re dealing with the same set that was active last rise.
On Mordremoth’s alertness level- there does seem to be something of a spectrum there, rather than being an instant jump from ‘asleep’ to ‘awake’. Going back through S2 dialogue, Trahearne says Mordy is “newly awakened” in Echoes of the Past, but also that it’s not “fully awake” as recently as Point of No Return. My personal suspicion is that everything we’ve seen up to this point represents a ‘stirring’ phase, like Primordus underwent in EotN, and that the destruction of the Pact fleet and the start of HoT marks Mordremoth becoming “fully awake”.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
My thinking is more or less in line with Crixler- both that this is maybe an ill-considered figurative hype line, and that, since that’s a boring answer, memory may not be the same as lifespan.
From the chronology we’ve pieced together between Edge of Destiny and the Forgotten path of Arah, we’ve been given reason to believe she continued to serve Kralkatorrik for a time after being cleansed. As has frequently been pointed out in the past, said path is also worded to suggest she existed before being Branded- and that there was a point in her history when the, presumably already intelligent being, was subjected to dragon corruption. (We’ve seen any number of examples of corrupted beings seeming to lose capacity to think, but so far no evidence that the reverse is possible. Even seemingly champion-powered creatures, such as the Maw, remained at creature levels of mental capacity.) Why would she continue to serve the being who had done that to her, even after he fell into hibernation, once she regained her own say in the matter?
Unless A.) she willingly subjected herself to the process and B.) the change isn’t actually as horrible to experience as it seems from the outside (both of which, I cede, are possibilities), the simplest answer would seem to be that she couldn’t remember it. That would add some interest to the Forgotten ritual, since we’ve seen dragon minions use memories of their past lives in service of their new masters. Maybe, instead of having some magical restorative, the ritual instead simply wipes the slate clean, purging the entire mind, or at least any parts that had been touched by the corruption.
Of course, it’s not a perfect explanation. It does nothing to address where the “older than the Shiverpeaks” intel could possibly come from, if not Glint (then again, how it would’ve made it from Eir to Glint is an open question anyway- their mutual friendship with Ogden, perhaps?), and to be honest I conceived the line of thought more as a ‘hm, that’s an interesting direction they could go’ than as a ‘this seems the most likely outcome given the current available evidence and knowledge of past trends’.
Incidentally, I dug up the wider context of the quote. I didn’t find it very helpful, but who knows, maybe it’ll help someone decide whether it’s meant literally.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Scarlet ruined the town, but she didn’t wipe out the… people of LA.
Pretty much comes down to this. The reason there was so much change last time was that there had been no survivors- the only reason it kept the same name is it happened to be built on the same harbor. This time that wasn’t the case, and the point was to rebuild, not make a fresh start. Somewhat… questionable city planning choices aside.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t hook up and have kids out of wedlock, which would likely still be considered a norm.
That’s what I was getting at. Norn are comfortable doing things that way, whereas human cultures tend to see marriage as ideally being a prerequisite to getting frisky. The stigma doesn’t seem to be there with norn. (Granted, I don’t know how much of that stigma we see with Tyrian humans either, but as the OP pointed out it’s a lot easier to use the real world to fill in the blanks with them.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Well, keep in mind that it’s really not complicated or set in stone for any race. Over-formalized issues like weddings aside, relationships really just fall somewhere on a spectrum, and while each race may stereotypically fall at a given point on it there are always exceptions.
Asura are more likely to break up than humans, but along with norn are also the only other major race that performs marriage. There was a great interview that hit on the topic pre-launch, so I’ll leave it to speak for itself.
Norn and charr tend to be more casual. I don’t have one go-to source for them, but the norn on the whole seem to be fairly monogamous, investing heavily in a single mate, but also very comfortable with the idea of living apart- Braham’s parents spring to mind, as do Knut and . We often see one parent left behind to tend the home with the kids while the other returns to a semi-nomadic lifestyle, but there’s no indication that such a split constitutes a break-up. We see a lot of instances of norn describing their partners as mates instead of souses, so it’s possible there isn’t as much societal pressure to marry and ‘make things official’, so to speak.
Charr, from what little we see in game, seem to gravitate towards serial flings. We do occasionally hear them use the term mate, but for the most part we see a very casual, possibly non-exclusive approach. Given that warbands are explicitly to charr society what families are to most others, that’s not too surprising. It’s also worth mentioning that charr… ‘courtship’ behavior, for lack of a better descriptor, is very confrontational. Galina Edgecrusher and Snarl Backdraft, who are the only prominent charr couple I can name off the top of my head, are a great example of this, so read through their dialogue if you want to get a feel for it. Aggression and competitiveness seem to be fundamental aspects of the typical charr relationship, perhaps another reason they don’t seem as important- a relationship that explosive, I imagine, could easily fall apart. Interestingly, I don’t know that I can name any examples of charr hooking up within their own warbands, but if that’s truly a trend there are more possible explanations than I have time to speculate on.
None of the races seem to hook up ‘just to reproduce’. There’s been some player speculation that perhaps that’s something that happens with the charr, but there’s no evidence for it; it’s just a guess based off their culture’s military values.
As for cross-racial relationships… thanks to aforementioned time constraints, I’m just going to link ya the latest thread on the topic . You’ll probably find the answers you’re looking for there.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s possible he has. As we saw with Mordremoth early in S2, not every dragon literally eats things. Maybe the Scrying Pool has had its magic drained.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Well, I think there’s a very simple reason we’ll never hear about someone who channels Rurik for survivability…
Jokes aside, those are all the sort of excellent questions we don’t have any answers at all for. Still, the profession isn’t even released yet. We may or may not get more in-game. I for one will be listening very closely for the news coming out of this beta weekend, if it’s true that the entire first chapter of story will be playable.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
There’s this dialogue, which implies farming is one of the things you can be assigned to fresh out of the fahrar. Since Airblade has a standard charr surname, I’d also take it to mean farmers at least can be in warbands.
That leads me to another question: do gladium even receive assignments from the legions? With the exception of Rox, who seems to be an unusual case, every one I can think of we only see loitering, trying to join a new warband, or pursuing personal objectives.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Well, unless you’re speaking specifically about norn necromancers, Trahearne is a pretty prominent example- Killeen from Ghosts of Ascalon is another, and if you look back to GW1, the list expands massively. Narrowing it down to norn, though… the reason you see so few examples is not due to any inherent evil to the profession- as Argon said, in this setting, there isn’t one- but a result of having less prominent norn, compounded with norn having less spellcasters. For example, can you name any good norn elementalists?
It’s ok, I’ll wait.
That said, Weibe does offer some insight into one of the more common avenues- your necro could be a shaman, since they’re much more often spellcasters. Raven is the obvious choice, with his association with death, but I could also see a Snow Leopard shaman who uses curses out of the darkness to bring down her prey before they ever know she’s there. Wolf and Bear would be much harder sells, to my way of thinking.
There’s also the possibility that your ends up in a culture where magic is less uncommon- maybe the Lionguard, or the Durmand Priory. The caveat there is that it distances them from norn culture, which may not be what you’re aiming for here.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to play against type! Maybe you really just have a norn who likes to raise dead things in order to kill other things. Not everyone needs to conform to their race’s stereotypical image.
Once you’re past the concept, and to the actual playing- good isn’t different for necromancers than it is for warriors or rangers or barkeeps. Don’t do ‘bad’ things, do do ‘good’ things, and voila! you’re playing a good character. Some specific examples geared towards necromancers might be to not raise dead from the graveyards of friendly communities, or to not draw out the suffering of victims of your hexes, or to use your excess life force to heal the wounded, but the vast majority of the time, a good necromancer won’t play any different than a good anything else.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
There is an asura in Rata Sum who breeds siamoths as lab companions, and another who is attempting to train a gaggle of pink moas. I’ve heard of players taking biologist or zoologist angles with their asura, or you could just have one who wants something less limited than a golem to guard the lab, or goes outside the lab often for any reason and decided they wanted to be better suited to traversing the wilderness, or maybe your ranger just wanted something exotic to send ahead to get hit while they remain safely back, in a variation of the typical asuran disregard for other forms of life. Plenty of options out there; you just need to get creative.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s a pretty well buried plot thread, but there’s a bit from Zojja about how the Inquest sold asura tech to Uzolan. My bet is that that’s how he acquired it, since his talents are in adapting other races’ technology more than in inventing anything with original capacities.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I know it’s not what you’re asking, but let me start by saying from an out-of-character context it depends entirely on who you’re bringing it up to. I know people who do it, and I know (admittedly less) people who can’t stand it to be done. Go for it, but be ready to get a nasty comment or two if you roleplay it in public.
From a lore perspective, it’d be considered very, very odd. There are a couple relationships where cross-species romantic attraction is vaguely hinted at, but it has never, to my knowledge, been acted upon. I’d imagine the response to it actually being done would be similar to the more unconventional relationships in the real world (see the note above)- depending on the observer in question, ranging from curiosity to acceptance to disgust, but with the most common by far being an uncomfortable ‘TMI’.
A possible sidenote specific to human-charr: if your boyfriend’s character is part of a Legion, it’s likely their superiors will have an opinion should they learn of the liaison. Depending on the officer’s take on humans and the peace treaty, it could run from washing their hands of it and turning a blind eye to a furious confrontation with the possibility of punishment. Something to take into account, if you want to flesh the characters out that far.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
and the fall of the White Mantle regime as stuff that is not worth mentioning in historical records. Especialy the last one is comparable to the US not mentioning the War of Independence in any of their history books (or insert any other nation shaping event). It’s that important.
Funnily enough, that’s the only one on the list that is addressed- regarding the nature of the White Mantle (not even that they once ruled) your character specifically says “They didn’t teach us that piece of history in school,” as well as " I thought the White Mantle were just a children’s tale told on Mad King’s day." The sentiment is echoed in the next quest, with a bartender remarking “I didn’t even know the White Mantle was real!” It could be that the information was deliberately suppressed, or that education among the masses simply sucks, but either way that chapter of Kryta’s history isn’t common knowledge anymore. We do see it’s still known among the higher ranks, and probably among the more educated, but that leads back to the second problem: how would that translate into an in-game mention? The primary mechanism for conveying knowledge in GW2 is streetside conversations, so unless it happens to take place in front of a memorial or graveyard, a war believed to be long since over isn’t likely to be brought. To use your example, I’ve never had a public conversation about the American Revolution outside of classrooms and the Fourth of July.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that the "GW1 PC should or should not be brought up. I simply maintain that it broadly makes sense that they aren’t.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
I would go so far and say let’s exclude the stuff that the PC did in Cantha and Elona. He/she was still involved in major events in Tyria. Too many to be so obscure to the public. I mean shouldn’t Krytan history books mentioned who took part in the war in Kryta? It’s not like the war was mostly forgotten, even Blimm’s relatively minor participation was still remembered in Ghosts of Ascalon (admittedly he spent the rest of his life in Kryta as a counselor to Livia, but still that’s less than the PC did).
Barely remembered. Dougal had to go rooting in the city archives to figure out who he was, and there was hardly anything recorded there. Our character’s could be the same, another name lost at the bottom of a pile of scrolls.
Besides, what would they be mentioned for? More than half of Prophecies takes places either on behalf of kingdoms that no longer exist or in uninhabited regions where there isn’t anything in the way of witnesses. The best candidate would be their work with the Shining Blade… but aside from ascended trinkets, how many references do you see to Evennia, Saidra, Markis, Barthalos, or Livia? If the other figures who had just as much or more importance aren’t discussed in the streets, why would our characters be any different?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.