R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
In fairness, we don’t know that the gods claimed to create humanity. That could have just as easily been something invented by the later humans, expanding on or perhaps misinterpreting the historical texts. The written sources we’ve seen, with one exception dated a thousand years after the Exodus, only refer to them bringing humans to Tyria (even that exception says they were “birthed upon the world”, with no mention of any direct involvement of the gods).
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
1.) We’re told that ministers can come from any walk of life, so I doubt land ownership is a requirement. I believe what they’re referring to is that ministers are elected to represent communities- Ascalonian communities, ‘land’, are fairly scarce, so the ones who are diluted within majority Krytan settlements are unlikely to get one of their own in their ministry seat.
2.) Not really, no. Ebonhawke doesn’t take part in the Krytan government. The relationship between them is described only vaguely, but it seems the only Krytan authority the holdout acknowledges is the monarch, and even then only grudgingly. Any Ascalonian minister would be Ascalonian by ethnicity, descended from an immigrant, not nationality.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Hm… the Chosen are supposedly just those with a large amount of magical potential. That could actually work, if one doesn’t hold too rigidly to what we concluded in the first game. If sacrifices are the only way the mursaat know how to charge the things, though, I’d rather not have them as allies.
On the EDs and gods tapping the same power source- the issue there is that the gods originally became gods somewhere else. For them to tap the same power as the dragons, it’d have to be something not tied to a specific world- which means it couldn’t be a concentration of ley lines in Tyria.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
To be fair, if the Jade Sea is thawing, the naga may have calmed down again. The lore could be made to work without trouble; I’d be more concerned with the hoops they’d have to jump through to get the armor to fit and let them, well, jump.
Out of curiosity, why they you say the kodan are too much like norn? I’ve heard that several times, but save in height never seen it myself.
(I would LOVE to play Margonites! I just fear the GW2 design wouldn’t do the original aesthetic justice.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
We had a similar conversation recently. It was looking at the entire charr population, not just the ones in Ascalon, but the conclusion is still applicable- the legion structure lets us make some pretty loose estimates, but there’s no official answer. I encourage you to read through it (it’s a pretty short thread) and, if you like, use one of those equations while only accounting for the tribunes in Ascalon.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s heartbreaking to pass on skritt and quaggan, but… tengu. They’re just more feasible.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Hm. Not convinced of the need for spoiler tags when the book is four years old, but I hadn’t thought about it, and you’re right. I got too caught on the remark that things between Logan and Rytlock were still bad until the trek to the Dragonspawn, but taking a step back, some kind of investment would’ve been necessary for that to matter, and Rytlock does seem the sort to take a surrogate warband.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Well, let’s take Rytlock, for example. He’s a Blood Legion soldier who’s serving with the Iron, when circumstances force him out of charr territories and then into the gladitorial pit. So far, so fine- he’s had precious little control over things and made a great show that he doesn’t like where they’re going. Then, in the pit, he discovers he has a love of luxury and hero worship, both of which he now receives on a regular basis. Now he has something to drive him, even if it isn’t particularly heroic. But then… Snaff gives a speech and he hares off to fight dragon minions, a choice that leaves him with less of his new-found wants. Why? Because he’s “a hero”, and apparently that’s what heroes are supposed to do. The decision doesn’t feel consistent with the character.
As for dwarf cities, not that we saw in the first game. There were some very vague hints hints in EotN that there might have been a long time ago, and of course we do see several small dwarvern ruins in caves in GW2 (mostly tombs or hidden refuges), but all of the recent big settlements were very much on the surface. There are a couple reasonable explanations that could excuse the book’s liberty, but it still is the sort of thing that jarred me out of the experience a bit.
@Konig I know why the differences are there, but the point is they open up a gap between book and game that the other two don’t. Same with living horses and underground dwarf cities- regardless of reasonable explanations, every other source treats them as obscure to the point of unseen, whereas this one book treats them kitten usual as not to bear much interest. As for the caravan, that means it’s taking the same routes that in GoA are considered too risky for even a stealthy party, which makes it hard to believe they’d survive, and in any case shouldn’t take them anywhere near the eastern edge of the basin. This is probably more of a case of ANet writing themselves into a corner with their geography, again, but in that case they should have just kept the gate intact. It feels like it served only as an excuse for Logan to meet Rytlock and for Jennah to be in Ebonhawke, which loops me back to the reason the book falls flat for me- things occur for narrative reasons, not in-universe ones. Like you mentioned above, it’s the cost of outsourcing your novels.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Personally, I liked GoA best, although I know that a lot of people these days find the chunks of exposition that’re by now well-established bog it down. I feel it actually had the best characters; I loved Killeen and Dougal, and Riona was a great and all too rare look into what makes a Tyrian villain tick. The plot was pretty predictable, but that just meant the emphasis could be shifted off what was happening and onto who it was happening to.
EoD was too formulaic for my tastes- the first half felt like it had too many pieces being moved simply so that they’d be in position, and the second was the same process of slaying repeated four times. The characters weren’t great either, and while some of that may have been a symptom of writing a group with a host of dysfunctions lurking just beneath the surface, they also just felt flat. Honestly, Eir and Caithe aside, none of them have any motivation or stake beyond Snaff’s handwaved “You’re heroes. You should be fighting real monsters.” Can you really blame Logan for leaving? Combined with the differences in the major cities and a couple elements that just felt off (human caravans in the Blazeridge mountains? Dwarvern cities underground? Horses? :P), it feels like the least connected to the actual game to me.
Sea of Sorrows was much better, and I applaud the content, but the structure robbed it of a lot of its punch. Jumping straight from momentous moment to momentous moment meant we didn’t get to see most of the character development, instead only observing the results. I would’ve loved to see the fight between Cobiah and Isaye, but instead we jump straight to the slow reconciliation years later. It’s kinda the opposite of GoA- all focus on the what at the expense of the who.
As far as future books go, we haven’t heard any plans. I’d like to think that there’s enough demand for them, but maybe their numbers showed differently, or maybe they’ve just decided to keep their writers busy with the game instead.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Wouldn’t the dragons be a large enough threat for them to reconsider their hidden ways?
Self-preservation is powerful motivator.
I’m… skeptical, since the dragon threat is what caused their hidden ways. During the last dragonrise they bailed on the world and they’ve essentially been in hiding ever since.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That could be an interesting twist… players as bad guys. My one objection would be that competing over territory would necessarily mean PvP, either open world (shudders) or by some regulated format that we all get handwaved into going along with. The result would be that the larger and more PvP oriented guilds would have the system slanted in their favor, while those of us in, say, guilds focused on roleplay or just running around may have trouble competing. The rewards would therefore have to be small enough to be fair to the losers.
Back on the lore topic, I do like the idea, but it is admittedly the sort of crumbling into anarchy that leaves the governments portrayed as impotent, which would severely hinder storylines involving them in the future. Why would we care if the Ministry overthrows Jennah once she’s become just a figurehead? So what if the charr legions find their rivalry resurgent, when they barely have a say over their own headquarters anymore? Player organizations would become the main movers and shakers, and that would be very difficult to construct a narrative around for ANet. Nice way to end the game and move it to self-sufficiency a la GW1, but not so nice so long as there are still stories they intend to tell.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’m with narwhal, in that I’m really not sold that these ‘Exalted’ are mursaat, but for argument’s sake… there were two parts to being able to kill mursaat. Yeah, Harnel’s right in that it required Ascension to see them when they didn’t want to be, but at that point they were still essentially knocking us out in one or two hits. Armor infusion was just as necessary to beating them, and if mursaat do come back I’d need to see both advantages accounted for before I would buy that we could kill them. The infusion we have could be a sufficient (if unexciting) way of filling that role, but I’d stress that we’d need to have it available from other game types first. Making someone run through Fractals several times before being able to participate in some HoT content would be… rightfully controversial.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It hasn’t changed yet, but Kalavier has the right of it. After the PS restoration patch, there will be no Arah story mode. The whole thing is being changed into a soloable one-off story instance.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
There is some clashing information on that point, though. Like Konig said, some parts of the lore are portrayed inconsistently.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Personally, I’d lean more towards Snaff falling into engineer, since he never actually casts a spell, all of his solutions revolve around something built for the task, and Zojja pokes at him for trusting metal over magic. That said, though, he’s probably simply a golemancer- not every individual is going to train in our ‘heroic’ professions, after all.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
only see Eir’s father but his last name is different ??
Norn surnames are very rarely hereditary. The child usually claims a different one than the parent, especially in cases like ‘Cliffstrider’ that are titles taken as names, since they’re usually specific references to something the individual had done.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
So here’s a question: could the Elder Dragons follow the player races into the mists? If all hope is lost would they be a safe retreat for the world’s civilizations?
Of course going into the mists would give the dragons a clear shot at the gates and make returning to Tyria likely impossible, but would leaving the world be a viable last resort?
It depends on what all else is out there. The parts of the Mists we’ve seen don’t appear suited for long-term habitation- maybe the Borderlands, but those can only fit so many, and we don’t know how stable they might be in the long term. Add to that we’ve yet to develop a reliable way to access or traverse the Mists. The few portals that are stable were created by divine intervention or flukes, and moving from one part of the Mists to another doesn’t seem feasible, although I suppose airships might do the trick.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Kin-of-Stegal. Who Stegal was, and what they did to warrant being remembered, we don’t know, but it’s pretty commonplace for norn surnames to reference famous relatives, usually parents, but not always.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’m pretty sure the Frostgorge sky has always been like that. Don’t have any screenshots, but I spend a lot of time there and I don’t remember it not having a nebula.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Honestly, I think Shiro is (going to be) the foremost proof that revenants aren’t actually channeling spirits. Essentially, as it’s been presented to us, we aren’t actually contacting Ventari or Malyck or Jalis- we’re just linking up to how the Mists remember these people. I don’t know that a memory could be given mortal form. At best it might be possible to bring a Shiro II into existence as a demon, and even that’s beyond the powers we’ve heard about.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Congrats on finishing, and I’m glad you enjoyed it! Don’t let Buddha get to you, we can be quite a bit jaded over here. The fight may not replay well, but I thought it was pretty cool my first time as well.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Possible, yes. The race turned themselves to stone and descended to fight the destroyers- it’s possible there are survivors down below that we’ll encounter when we go after Primordus. If by come back, however, you mean rebuild their society, it’s probably not going to happen. Being unable to breed and, so we’re told, mentally changed to have no interest in cohesion as a race prevents that.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Personally, I don’t see many strong parallels to the mess over Israel, beyond that it’s the only high-profile revanchist conflict in the world today. But I digress. Having riden out a few of these threads, it seems to me to boil down not to identifying strongly with the Ascalonians (I played Prophecies first, but I don’t feel like taking either side), but more to a couple other factors.
First, and I believe primarily, it’s an issue where different individual definitions of guilt and justice can lead to different conclusions. These are principles that can be very deep-rooted, and I think it’s easier to take things personally, and by result argue vociferously, when one feels their values are being slighted or outright attacked by proxy. If you can put yourself through reading the arguments, the bulk aren’t fighting about their sides (although there are a few), but about the rationale of who deserves what, often forgetting the Ascalonians and charr altogether to drag in real world illustrations. It seems to stop being about a fantasy and start being made very real.
The second thread that usually comes up a bit later is the schism between the tone of GW1 and GW2. The first game, especially early on, was very black-and-white, human civilizations on one side and nonhumans largely on another as monsters to be put down like animals. GW2 largely treats non-human races as people. There are several other bones to be picked, but proponents of GW1’s way of looking at things find this to be one of the most jarring changes, and the already heated debate ostensibly over the charr’s moral standing (the most monstrous race in GW1 made into ‘good guys’ in GW2) gives them an opening to air their grievances. The undercurrent of which game had the more valid stance intertwines with the moral debate, the fanbases jeering down their opposition continue to provide a cover obscuring the real conflicts, and a perennial clusterkitten reaches the apex of its cycle.
Anyway, that’s just my outsider’s way of interpreting the matter. I’ve seen several of these, but I rarely participate, and I’ve never tried to sit down someone who does to see what’s making them tick. Maybe they’d have a different way of seeing it.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It wasn’t really mind control- like Riot said, he just used asuran crystals, a link between a device he wore and similar crystals on or in something else to gain access to what passed for a mind in other creatures (he desribed it as essentially functioning like a mental portal). More mindless creatures, like golems and non-sapient branded, could be controlled by this method, but with Kralkatorrik he was only able to interfere, temporarily disrupting the dragon’s control of its body to force it from the sky. It’s not like he could have just flown Kralk off to do something or used the link to take control of the Branded armies.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I doubt the history books are obscuring the matter- it’s kind of hard to cover up an entire reign. It’s far more likely that it’s common knowledge for those who care to know such things and that we, the players (not necessarily our characters) are out in the cold simply because the devs have decided it’s unnecessary detail. Since it’s not filled out, that leaves a blank space your fic can fill however you like- just be aware the official canon might one day decide to go back to it and plow over your work in the process.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Another interesting, potentially worrisome question- could Abaddon or Zhaitan be channeled, and if not, why? If you’re looking for an “especially powerful imprint on the world”, it’d be difficult to beat entities that have reshaped entire regions. I suppose they could always take the easy ‘too powerful to handle’ answer, but where is the line drawn?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s possible that they’re as talkative as the Echo of Turai Ossa, however.
But it does seem that the legends are just spirits being channeled. Which makes Revenants full out ritualists in heavy armor and with martial arts mixed in. Which is far less interesting to me.
If you read the article, it’s made pretty clear that they’re lucid. Mallyx will actually argue with the player in a back-and-forth sort of thing, for instance.
EDIT: Also, the echo of Turai Ossa was just that: an echo, a mindless copy of his ghost. The revenant legends are explicitly not just echoes.
Actually…
The Mists remember what came before, and echoes of those who left an especially powerful imprint on the world of Tyria can still be found there.
I kinda see them, and the Turai echo, as being the same sort of thing as we see in Fractals- essentially a spontaneous recreation of someone as they existed in the past. As we see with Turai and the Fractal entities, being an echo doesn’t stop them from responding or reacting to those around them, and if Dessa is indeed one of the category then they may even be convincing enough to seem like they’re real. Of course, if all that is true I have to wonder whether there’s any true difference between an echo and a spirit… besides that there can possibly be multiple echoes channeled by multiple revenants. If it really does just boil down to the prospect of an infinite number of perfectly copied consciousnesses, ANet may be opening a Pandora’s Box here.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It never occurred to me that mesmers could dabble in entertainment (assuming some sort of role as a jester of sorts). Suddenly the harlequin masks make a lot more sense.
The risen jesters do seem to be mesmers, maybe mixed with ele. In GW1 mesmers were also quite often actors, and I even feel like they’d be inclined towards music, although I’ve no solid examples there.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Yeah, the emperor’s paranoia and obsession with “purity” drove all the non-humans out of Cantha. I think if the Tengu get introduced as a race it’ll be from the Dominion of Winds.
I’m sure Konig will point it out if I’m wrong, but I believe the Ministry of Purity was mostly separate from the Emperor. I just re-played WoC recently and I recall them saying how the Ministry of Purity had surpassed the power of the Imperial Guards AND had the support of the people, meaning that they in effect controlled the Empire.
Yes, they were effectively separate at the time we saw them (although they weren’t at the point of controlling the Empire- they could just get away with whatever they liked). Kisu’s successor, however, Emperor Usoku, espoused the Ministry’s values, and we’re told he’s the one who expelled the tengu around 50 years after Winds of Change.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Which is odd that there’s such a heavy Canthan association with them (both by players and the game).
I can understand it from the player’s side, at least. The Angchu, and to a much lesser extent the Sensali, were the only tengu who weren’t just trash monsters to wade through, and what little tengu lore didn’t come from the Factions manual came from the Factions quests or Talon.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
But I distinctly remember them in the Shiverpeaks in Prophecies right? Or am I losing my mind? So is there any lore as to why they landed in the Shiverpeaks or DoW?
There were Quetzal in what’re now the Woodland Cascades (west of the Far Shiverpeaks) and Avicara in the southern Shiverpeaks, what’s now labeled as the Steamspur Mountains and Deldrimor Front. We’re told they all went to the Dominion of Winds to join the Canthan tengu though- I believe there’s a piece of lore floating out there that the Great Tsunami was taken as an omen to unite the race. And yes, the tengu in Cantha were expelled by the human empire that as far as we know still dominates that continent.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Is that map factual?
It shows Orr connected to Elona. Is Elona really that close? If so I’m confused as to why ANet is sending us in the complete opposite direction
If you mean the one Lostwingman linked, yes, it is, although the color effects are all fan-made and speculative. We aren’t being sent in that direction simply because ANet doesn’t want to go that way- either they aren’t ready to go to Elona yet, or they think whatever they’ve got for us in the jungle is even better.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I vaguely recall a similar stone in gw1’s Talmark Wilderness area in Kryta. Could be mistaken though. I think it was where claypool is now.
The old site of Dakutu Village? Judging from several maps that compare GW1 historical sites to GW2 sites, Claypool appears to have been built upon the site of Dakutu, which was the first main base of the Shining Blade during the civil war.
Minor quibble, but not really the first. It was either the last or second-to-last, depending on whether the war continued after the Battle of Lion’s Arch.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
They still exist, but most of the magic is now outside of them, so using their limitations isn’t necessary. To quote a dev interview:
Esprits d’Orr : We heard that a link exists between the ancient times’ four schools of magic (Preservation, Destruction, Denial, and Aggression) and the classes of the game. However, we haven’t found any reference in game about these schools. Do they still exist, are they known to the races, and if so, to which kind of current magic are each of them related to ?
Angel McCoy : These schools aren’t as important in modern magic as they were even 250 years ago. They have fallen out of style as people have realized that magic doesn’t need these kinds of limiting factors. Only the most ancient magic users, those who based their magical constructs on this dogma, continue to pursue their knowledge in this way. Thus, you’re only likely to find reference to them in the back-most shelves at the Durmand Priory and in jokes made by young people about old people.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Huh. Apparently there are no food vendors in Rata Sum. Odd.
Anyway, I know of at least one place where an asura mentions growing vegetables (ambient dialogue in the cave camp in Fireheart), and googling the issue reminds me that in the books Snaff puts together a omnivorous meal for himself, Zojja, and Eir (and Garm.) I feel like there’s been some other sort of out-of-game comment on the matter, but I can’t find it now. If anyone else remembers, though, feel free to speak up!
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
*distribute a sixth of the world’s magic. The stuff leaks back out of the corpse into the ecosystem, so in theory it’s like he fell back asleep without the prospect of him ever waking up again.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Wasn’t it made very clear in GW1 that by the end of EOTN only one musaat was still alive and he was avoiding humans?
Then again they were called the ‘unseen’ gods for a reason…
It was only suggested, and even that didn’t pan out- we kill another seven after EoTN. All we know for sure is that at least one was still alive at the end of that game- whether it was just one or a dozen or thousands, we don’t know.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s possible, but it’s just as likely that the cult simply outlived their gods. You mentioned the Flame Legion- they’re if anything more fanatical than ever, but they’ve gone through at least three sets of deities. Arguably even the mainstream humans are like that, seeing as your average citizen is unlikely to see any direct evidence that the Six still exist. It’s not at all a stretch to say that the Mantle could still worship the Unseen Ones even if the mursaat are extinct, and it’d be very interesting if they’ve found a new patron.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
which is how they differentiate friend from foe (no link = foe).
Well, not the risen. There’s this event where a skritt test subject is able to trick them into thinking he’s one of them with just a scent derived from risen fish oil. The inventor claims that it’d work on any of “the nonsentient ones”.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
As far as we know, guardians are post-bloodstone era, meaning they don’t have to map to any one in particular. That said, a lot of their stuff, right up to the faith-based power source, comes straight from monks, who at a very safe guess were hooked to Preservation.
We don’t have anything specific on any other current class, including mesmer, but my educated guess is they’re powered by a mindset of “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Even ignoring that contention (and, for the record, I do favor the frozen in time interpretation to the always equally applicable one) there’s still Arah explorable, which to my understanding is what Slowpoke is talking about in that quote. That, no matter how you look at it, is after Zhaitan’s defeat, and there are still loads of average (albeit dungeon-scaled) risen running about.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Nope. We don’t even have lore on why she makes hounds- hell, even the explanation for sylvari has some holes in it right now.
Mordremoth seems to design it’s minions based on living creatures it finds. e.g. Mordrem trolls look similar to flesh and blood trolls.
It’s not a huge leap to say the pale tree did this as well, but then with the remains of Ronan’s village. It’s likely there was a hound buried there somewhere.
Yeah, but there’ve got to be more than two species who’ve died on that spot. We know Ventari did- why no planty centaurs? There were absurd numbers of riders around that island as well, and krait and drakes not too much farther out, certainly within the bounds of the Grove today. If you want to trust the overlay map, in fact, half of Arbor Bay was engulfed. I don’t object to the idea that she used what was around her/rotting in her soil as a template, but of all the variety she’d have to pick from, why humans and dogs? That’s the part that mystifies me.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Nope. We don’t even have lore on why she makes hounds- hell, even the explanation for sylvari has some holes in it right now.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That’s… a good question. I bet at least a subset will remain immune, since they are after all a ranger pet, but if the Nightmare is Mordremoth’s corruption we know they’re corruptible. Of course, we’re not 100% sure yet what exactly it is about the Dream that’s keeping the sylvari safe, but my bet would be that the hounds are also connected to it- maybe not as fully as the sylvari, but that’s balanced by the impossibility of deliberately damaging their own connection.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
1. What Buddha said. My Iron charr also had Howl as legionnaire, so in those cases you’re free to make it whatever you like.
2. It’s an offscreen promotion that happens between the 20 and 30 story chunks, which can be weird. I get it for the sorcerous shaman storyline, but my charr had just finished committing treason at that point (won’t spoil more than that).
3. Yes. We’re just on detached duty. In theory we can return (or be called back) at any time and pick up where we left off.
4. I’m most fond of Reeva, personally.
5. Tossing my vote to Sorcerous Shaman too, and I’d also say that I found the Loyal Soldier to be bland and maybe a bit out of place. Honorless Gladium can be hit or miss- the story is good, but the writing has some weird holes.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
On the priests and such in Arah- they were in the city proper. Zhaitan laired out east, and we don’t know whether he ever left his pit. It could well be that they never even saw him.
Remaining champions… that’s tricky. The changes to Teq could be a unique case, or they could arguably mean that any cyclical event is still ongoing canon, which would have all of the cathedral priests still coming back as well as a few others. In any event, the Pact’s invasion corridor never took them to the south-eastern regions or Scavenger’s Causeway, so any champions that were out that way will still be around, dragons possibly included. If it’s still canon that Zhaitan was simultaneously pushing towards Elona, there’ll almost certainly be some leading that assault in the desert. Similarly, the Ring of Fire hasn’t been swept clean yet, so there’s a possibility of others lingering there.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Is it? Or is it the land, or the crown’s influence, or the accumulated generations of prestige? There are different ways of looking at a kingdom, probably even in an in-universe perspective, and most of those ways wouldn’t hold that Ebonhawke is the same as the Kingdom of Ascalon.
But leaving aside justification and the fact that Samuelsson doesn’t want to be a king, there are a few political realities that would make claiming the title a bad idea. The charr could very easily take it as a statement of intent, that the humans won’t be content with just Ebonhawke and the lands surrounding it, especially at this fragile point in the treaty. Kryta’s aid is being rendered on the basis of a power looking out for a dependency; an attempt to put Ebonhawke on equal footing could upset that arrangement, which may or may not be harmful if the treaty goes through (same treaty the coronation is possibly risking). Absolute worse case scenario, especially if the inhabitants of Rurikton and Ascalon Settlement choose to return to their reborn ancestral land, is Kryta seeing New Ascalon as a rival whose existence weakens it. I don’t want to make it sound like it’d be the end of everything, but what it would do is take a tangled web of delicate relations and greatly increase the strain on them for no tangible benefit.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
So if Commander Samuelsson is confirmed to be a descendant of the Ascalonian Kings… why the heck is he not named a king or at least a prince, duke, or whatever?? Is it too much to ask to have another human monarch? He’s the Ascalonian heir; he’s not gonna go charging into DR assaulting the queen for the Krytan throne…
Because there is no Kingdom of Ascalon anymore?
This, although he does claim the title Duke of Ebonhawke. He probably could get away with crowning himself if he felt like it (and he’s not the sort who would), but it’d be an empty vanity at this point. Maybe in a few generations, once the settlements beyond the walls grow larger and regain some measure of their lost power and wealth.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Every royal line have lots of kittens. There is probably a lot of descendants among Kryta refugees, we just don’t know about them.
Maybe, but maybe not. Between the Searing and those unable or too stubborn to leave afterwards , only a very small proportion of Ascalonians survived to make it to Kryta. Ebonhawke would be a more likely bet for sudden revelations of royal ancestry.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.