Guild Wars 2

I can’t speak on what might have changed between games, but I can say that outside the charr, who are also suspicious of magic in general, there doesn’t seem to be any unsavory reputation for mesmers. It’s a perfectly accepted, even comparatively prestigious role in human society, pursued by much of their nobility; the asura and sylvari don’t seem to view it as anything different from any other magic; and among the norn it appears to be so rare as to not have any reputation at all (although that may just be the player/NPC knowledge segregation at work again).

Least trustworthy would probably go to the thieves, whose reputation is such that their membership is collectively referred to as a sort of criminal.

Others have already expressed this, but my best bet is that Caithe’s secret is Wynne’s secret, ‘something that could control all sylvari’, and that after learning it even she agreed Faolain should have known, either because of the nature of the knowledge or because of how far beyond reason Faolain ultimately prove willing to go to obtain it.

Yes… ish. They’re trying to fill the caverns, at any rate. The goal of the jump puzzle is to retrieve the object they’re using to make it rain underground.

They’re building the boat, actually.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

He was, but superfitially. Glint did pierce skin. And he did crash.

Though I think the shock of nearly being killed by 6 puny mortals – even having his mind overpowered by one, leading to his body being controlled by said one – would be a bigger shock to the system than any physical wound.

Likely. Yet an Elder Dragon doesn’t strike me as the sort to cower in a corner for seven years because its expectations were overturned. So, Slowpoke, coming out with superficial cuts, possibly some bruising (if anything had been broken or even sprained it seems unlikely he’d have been capable of launching himself back into the air), and an unpleasant surprise… I suspect Kralkatorrik is back in fighting form long since, if indeed he ever left it.

People seem to think he fled, but he accomplished his objective, and killed the ant that could mess around in his head in the bargain.

Correct me if I’m wrong… but Kralkatorrik was never actually wounded, was he?

NaotsuguLH.8915:

In ‘Steel Tide’ Towards the end, Tactition Beirne creates a cutscene where he saves Crusader Deborah. However. He does not die. Matter of fact, he never went down. The nafter killing the archmage which he antagonized to stop from killing Deborah, another cutscene hits where she’s sad he died and adopts his dog. I literally walked over and talked to him. He didn’t die. Like… what?

That’s probably a bug, not a plot hole.

Gryphon.2875:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lots. Some were simple typos, but others like the DR statue of Grenth was fully rewritten (which was changed last year in the summer).

The objects added in F&F3 were introduced half-done and fixed in a latter update. The ‘A Dragon Primer’ in the DP library (added with E1) had a typo of listing two points as 8, ending with a point 9, but now has the correct numbering up to 10.

All of these were stealth updates to dialogue. The statue is the most upfront case of changing lore, the rest tends to be typo fixing. But none ever stated in the update notes.

Now I’m curious as to what the statue used to read. o.O

Nothing too different. Important change wasn’t the quote, but the author- it was Malchor before, now it’s Desmina, lending credence to the theory Malchor was Grenth’s father.

Jaken.6801:

Brandon.8294:

I think it would be awesome to see what the luxons have done with their jade sea. maybe carved an entire city into it.

Or how the kurzicks stone forest looks after 250 years of weathering. maybe the kurzicks could of became nomad like, while the luxon are more noble like with their city of jade.

if im not wrong the jade sea is supposed to become ater again and the stone forrest, becomes normal again.
I am sure their curse was lifted

I’m skeptical about the Jade Sea thawing. Even in the EotN manual it was presented as mere hearsay, and the priory has a block of jade, complete with frozen creature, in their vault.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Harbinger, Death’s Anthem, the Ship of Sorrows minidungeon, and a few ships docked at Rata Sum use this design.

Sea of Sorrows calls Harbinger a xebec.

Sea of Sorrows also describes Harbinger, and xebecs in general, as clippers- fast, narrow boats with little room for cargo and large masts. That’s… about the opposite of the arc models we see in game.

I remember it mainly for one of the two worst places for being designed to overagro on riders… shudders

But really, while I too am disappointed, the terrain differences are nothing out of the ordinary. The topography of every zone in the game has been drastically changed, entirely for mechanical and design reasons, I suspect. Trying to find a story explanation is, in my opinion, just a fast way to a futile headache.

DarcShriek.5829:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

DarcShriek.5829:

@Herp

We’re done killing dragons. It does no good. They just get replaced with new ones. We have to find a different way to deal with them.

Well no. Technically we still need to kill them. We just need to find something to take their place (or at least that is the popular theory).
I don’t see what else we could do other than killing them. Forcing them to sleep just means someone else is going to have to deal with them in a couple thousand years time.

No, we don’t need to kill them. We just need to keep the magic levels under control. We can put them to sleep and keep them there indefinitely buy controlling magic levels.

Not necessarily. It depends on rather the dragons wake at a certain level of ambient magic, once they’ve lost a certain level of magic, or simply on a timer. At this point we can’t say for sure which it is, and any but the first wouldn’t be changed by a bloodstone-esque regulation scheme.

@Dondarrion It’s Konig’s best guess. All we know from the game is that it probably starts with an S, and a Priory historian has said even that could be a mistranslation.

I also find myself objecting to using visions for so many of the big moments. It means that the big things are happening to us, rather than letting us do the big things- which in a way is an even more passive version of one of S1’s problems, where we were always reacting to Scarlet.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

They seem to be matching the Personal Story’s length of 8 due to the complaints about Season 1 being too long and drawn out. The issue is that the Personal Story was too short (imo at least).

And even then, we accomplished much more in any given PS chapter than in any of the S2 episodes we’ve had. Then, we always accomplished what it was we set out to do at the start, and while back then it led to a very compartmentalized story, S2 hasn’t given us any sense that we’re succeeding. At this point, if we do manage to beat Mordremoth it’ll feel almost like an accident.

I’d argue that there’s no way to tell if Riannoc is dead- if he’s not dead, it’s a retcon to the order. If he is dead, it’s a retcon to the response… and it should also be a retcon to knowledge of the order. If Riannoc’s death wasn’t felt by others, and if the circumstances of Riannoc’s death are not uncovered until the PS, how can the sylvari say not only when he died, and where that puts him in relation to other deaths, but even that he had died at all?

I most certainly will not be applying, but as little as I like that we’re apparently being asked to do what I thought ANet was already doing, it would at least let us know that the job is being done. This program potentially could make certain ANet here’s our complaints about lore issues (albeit too late to fix them, so it’d be of limited value), and would hopefully see some more posts by Angel, Scott, or whoever is doing the loremaster position there now resolving the small, non-plot-point questions we so often have.

My concern is their request to see “community leadership”- by most standard definitions, I don’t feel ours has leaders. We have people who know what they’re talking about, and have developed a reputation for it, but those also tend to be the people most active in our arguments, which typically would be considered points against leadership.

Just checked it out for myself. The centaur threatened Faolain, she screamed and called in her cronies, and they both attacked each other at the same time. There was a point where she made a casting animation, but no attack- I think she was just porting in her proto-Court.

My facebook feed just reminded me of something else irritating… the tagline for this episode, which ArenaNet has posted all over the place, is “To catch a thief, you must become a thief”; and yet, we neither catch the thief, nor even find any information that tells us where the thief might be.

I guess I’m in the minority here, but I actually liked Faolain in this episode. It was fleshing out one of the non-dragon villains, something that’s needed to happen for a very long time, and it was done without trying to justify her actions by making her relatable or sympathetic. I’m all for letting the bad guys be fleshed out and still be bad people.

That, and, as mentioned above, she was the only one who seemed properly horrified by what the asura were doing. In my book, that makes her the least flat of the lot.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

GuildMag: What, exactly, is the Toxic Hybrid? Also on the Toxic Hybrid – during the fight, the Hybrid says “No! I cannot be the last of my kind” and yet by all appearances, it is the first. What exactly did he mean?

The Toxic Hybrid started out as a regular krait that was transformed while inside the tower. It thought it was being transformed into a Prophet. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it wasn’t. We may never know, but the krait believed it was. Not only did players stop them from creating any more of these monsters, but they killed the one that had been made.

The Toxic Hybrid spoke those words because it is the first and last of its kind. It’s expressing shock and dismay as it dies, as it expected to be the first of many such monsters to emerge from the tower.

http://guildmag.com/magazine/issue11/season_one_lore_interview.htm

This is what I was remembering. A regular krait that was transformed.

IIRC, there was another that I cannot find, which basically said it was able to become the hybrid due to the krait’s natural transformation abilities seen in GW1.

Might have been part of the TowerTalk interview I quoted. I didn’t listen through again, just dug up my post on it from several months back.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Faolain was manipulative even from the beginning, and Caithe began naive just like others of her race. She trusted Faolain just like how Riannoc trusted Wayne. Both of the later betrayed the former.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t see what was going on outside the hut, but I didn’t see anything to suggest Faolain was being manipulative at that point. She was caustic in her opinion, overtly racist, and seemed to be dragging Caithe along whether the other wanted to come or not, but there wasn’t any point where I caught her being deceitful or trying to control Caithe. If anything, in the last instance the centaur felt manipulative- deliberately leading us away from Faolain, then trying to keep us separated while Faolain was being attacked.

For a filler patch, I agree, it would be good, but we’re past the point where we should be having filler patches. Next patch is the Season 2 finale, and the lead up to that has been two tiny steps forward in a row. It doesn’t exactly engender confidence.

So… this didn’t end up actually factoring into the patch at all. The reinvigorated cynic in me is betting we’re going to be strung out on these teaser pics until Season 3 starts.

Huh. Missed that stumble on the first to die thing. That’s the second time Riannoc’s timeline has caused a significant snarl in the sylvari’s as a whole.

In defense of Aife, she never made it out like going into the Wastes was a big deal. She just recited it along with a list of examples to prove she was well traveled. It is weird with some of the early S2 stuff, however, where the Seraph and Durmand Priory both make it out like nobody’s known a way into the Wastes before Mordremoth broke open a pass.

I loved the first instance, and the second was interesting mechanically (not to mention made me feel like I had an obligation to shoot Vorpp…), but overall? This feels like another cliffhanger just to manufacture some suspense. I don’t feel hooked. I don’t feel entranced or excited about what might happen next. I feel angry that we’re advancing through the narrative in stutterstep.

Also, on the Vorpp thing… does anyone else think it’s weird how everyone but Faolain seems to have played down the decision? The guy tortured and massacred at least a dozen young, naive sylvari- essentially killing children- seemingly to the extent that he blew up their cages when it was clear he had lost, even though he seemed to know they were intelligent beings that could experience pain… and Canach just treats it like something instructive, our character shrugs it off pretty quickly, and the quest summary doesn’t even mention that people died. I know that Anet has had issues in the past capturing how serious death can be, but this is a new low.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

That’s why I shouldn’t post in the morning, when I’m in a hurry. I was actually thinking about treants, but for some reason I linked to druids instead. Anyway, the text was created long before Sylvari were even a concept, so it can’t be talking about them. Unless of course Anet goes and retcons it, it’s not like they haven’t done that before. Until that, I stay with the explanation that they are treants or possibly druids (they could have given up there corporal forms later voluntary).

Brings up an interesting question- should it be considered a retcon if there was no specific meaning intended in the first place?

“[Scarlet] has created this hybrid of krait and nightmare that, that is really nightmarish, if you’ll pardon my using the same word again. Um, so, she’s telling everyone that this is, this is the prophet. The krait believe her. She’s basically incubated a normal krait inside the, a pod on the, on the plant, and as it has become infused with the toxins from this plant, uh, in, in great quantity, it has evolved, and it comes out, and, um, you fight it.”

That’s the quote from Angel on the TowerTalk interview.

I’m all for the illusion of choice, and I think they are inching back in that direction (though they’ve got a ways to go to make up all the ground they’ve given up in the last year), but I would caution that the illusion is all we can realisically expect. Jaken drew a parallel to tabletop RPGs, and while I don’t think they were saying that they expect that of GW2, it bears mentioning that the MMORPG format can’t manage that level of personalization. Games like D&D are fueled by the imagination of the participants; video games, even RPGs, even MMOs, are fueled by the imagination of the devs (with a partial exception for the roleplaying community, but they still can’t affect the world outside their social circles).

Considering that what we’re seeing right now is theoretically the limit of what the resources they’re willing to devote to the Living World can do with a single non-branching storyline, any move to give us real choice would adversely affect either the quality of or the length of time between patches, and ANet already needs to deal with vocal detractors on both of those points.

The sylvari-Melandru connection was a pretty common theory at one point, I think, but it seems to have fallen out of favor, probably because that one very vague scripture is the only evidence for it, combined with widespread cynicism regarding the prospects of ANet ever giving the gods a new role to play. (Although, with this new scroll of the five nonsense…)

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily disproving it, and I’d be excited to see the story go in that direction; there’s just no real reason to believe it will.

@Buddha That’s one interpretation, anyway. No real evidence for that either, except what the scripture says and the fact that they were humans who apparently at one point turned into treants, with evidence against being that it’s heavily implied the druids remained in human form until at least a century before Prophecies (972 A.E. or thereabouts, over a thousand years after the transformation of the tribe of Ewan).

CureForLiving.5360:

Zaxares.5419:

Well, duh. That’s what the Toxic Hybrid was!

Didn’t we get an official word on what the Hybrid was? Either it was a krait-shaped plant or a krait that got a lot of poison pumped into him. Although I don’t think it was a true hybrid.

The later- an apparently average krait that was infused with the towers toxins and “nightmare”, iirc, which is where the hybrid joke actually gets a bit of fact to it.

skullmount.1758:

Not sure if it was already posted here, but in WP’s video, he shows that the three symbols around the snakes are the same that we had to do/find in GW1 prophecies to become ascended.

The images that are on the door now. The ones we see in the trailer are different. Since, as I understand it, to see the door now requires mapbreaking, it’s entirely possible to Crystal Desert runes are just a placeholder or an idea they later discarded. I’m hesitant to read to much into it until we see what the door looks like when we’re supposed to be able to reach it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This particular dialogue is up on the wiki either way for one of the steps at least.

It’s a pity the Dusk and Night variants aren’t. I’d get them up, but I’m also out of slots.

Could be why we haven’t seen Faolain in so long. She doesn’t need Caithe anymore, because Scarlet set her up with a nice Oratuss boy.

Maybe that’s what Scarlet had the Inquest on for. Why stop with alliances, when your
unusual pairings could be so much more permanent?

As the General marched away- it made a weird sort of sense that she wouldn’t just walk anywhere- Saria unsteadily made her way over to a rarely frequented wall of bookcases and slouched in the corner, rubbing at her sore legs and testing out a human shudder. All things considered, that could have gone worse. In fact, she considered herself somewhat lucky. To be let off so easily, she must not have been the only one to dislike Caudecus.

Quiet footsteps approached behind the bookcase. She didn’t bother looking up. There was nothing to see, and it would draw attention if she was observed seemingly talking to herself. “The Legate Minister stormed off in a huff. His delicate pride should keep him well away from the Vigil now. My boss certainly thinks so. I’ve been assigned to the Gendarren refugees on manual labor.”

“Well done. I know you might have mixed feelings about sabotaging a group that was just recently courting you, but these Vigil numbskulls are far too naïve to go head-to-head with a snake like Beetlestone. He would have manipulated them into intervening to speed things up with the centaurs, then turned around and used their involvement as ammunition, claiming Jennah needed foreign assistance to mask her weakness, and from a charr, no less. It would have been one step closer to a coup.”

“I understand, Preceptor.”

“Find an excuse to make an overnight supply run to Applenook. We have a pirate situation, and your superior has thoughtfully given you a crack at resolving it without blowing your cover. We’ll have an operative fill you in when you arrive.” The footsteps receded as quietly as they came.

Despite the risk, Saria allowed herself a tired smile. It had been harrowing, and it could have ended badly, but her improvisation paid off. It was a good first day in the Order.

Her grin grew. To top everything off, she would even get out of punishment to shoot at pirates. Somehow, everything had gone her way. Saria felt a smug satisfaction swell, buoying and undampenable.

Unless this other new boss was a charr.

Word count: 1043

Well, here it is. Sorry for putting this off so long, I just really didn’t want to go first. I also think I might’ve muddled my tenses in the first paragraph. Ah well.

Saria swallowed nervously, hoping that her stance was rigid enough. She’d never been in an army before, and so had no idea if she was doing this salute thing right, but she figured she could make up for that by standing as uncomfortably as possible. Or, at least, she hoped so. Militaries put great stock in uncomfortable poses, right? If it could earn her a little goodwill here, discomfort would be a small price to pay. Goodwill would’ve been useful right about then. If she were human, she’d probably be sweating. Not that Saria understood why. Did humans equate heat with nervousness? If so, why did they also shudder? Shuddering was pretty much shivering, and shivering was what they did when it was cold out, which was just about the opposite of… the growl of the charr in front of her caused Saria to blink her way out of that line of thought.

Probably not what she should be dwelling on when her new boss was mad at her.

“So…” Saria cleared her throat tentatively, “That guy with the shiny head was…?”

“Lord Caudecus Beetlestone, head of the Chamber of Ministers, the second most powerful individual in Kryta, and above all, human. Human males consider balding embarrassing, and believe it to be rude to draw attention to those it’s happened to.”

“Yes, ma’am. My apologies, ma’am. I just don’t understand the way he reacted when I admired his face hair. All I said was that it looked like a tusk…?”

“A boar’s tusk. Pigs and their relatives a considered an icon of ugliness by humans. Their kind, especially their nobles, put great stock into their appearances, and Lord Caudecus must put careful effort into maintaining that beard- not face hair. Knowingly or not, you told him, to his face, that you thought all his effort made him repulsive.”

“Oh. So what’s going to happen now? Um, ma’am?”

The General growled at her again, glowering like the statues of the human war god in the pillars behind her. Saria fought down an indignant response. Sure, she had messed up, but she was trying so hard to make up for that, even if her body protested her manner of repentance! Her boss was overreacting. “Now, I need to make up my mind whether or not my urge to kick you off the battlements would be worth the loss of your talents. Lord Beetlestone was here as a culmination of months of painstaking, and also occasionally humiliating, diplomatic effort, in an attempt, all in an attempt to convince him to accept our order’s efforts to arbitrate and ultimately resolve his differences with Queen Jennah over the Ebonhawke truce, that they put their focus more properly on driving out the centaur hordes, bringing an end to refugee crisis we are striving to mitigate and finally freeing up the Seraph to send troops and not well-wishes to our crusade against the dragons. Whatever happens now, thanks to your blunder, it most certainly won’t be that.”

Ok. Maybe not overreacting.

“Maybe you could kick me off over the water, ma’am? That way you wouldn’t lose my talents. I don’t think the sharks would eat me.”

That offer earned her bared teeth. Were all charr this impossible to please? “ Not. The. Point. This is what is going to happen, recruit. You are going to be assigned to the refugees from Nebo Terrace and Ascalon Settlement on scrapper duty, since you’ve ensured they’re going to stay our problem. Your combat abilities are too valuable to waste indefinitely, so you are going to try to compress four months of punishment into two weeks. You are going to dig the latrines. You are going to serve the meals. You are going to load and unload supplies, pitch and repair tents, split firewood, muck out wherever it is they keep the pack bulls, and not do a single thing exciting, thrilling, or otherwise like what you’ve made a habit of enjoying. Is that clear?”

Saria winced. “Yes, ma’am. It’ll be done just as you say, ma’am.”

“And stop doing that. I’ve no use for kiss-ups.”

Huh. She thought military types liked that.

I believe the devs said on GW2Guru that interracial breeding is impossible. I don’t have the quote, but I’m sure someone who’s been around longer will chime in with the link.

@Iason in the real world, yes. In Tyria though they use the term race for species (if only the intelligent ones), not ethnicity, so interracial would still be accurate.

Selene.9415:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Mental Paradox.3845:

Fun fact: they refuse to remake Cantha and Elona because poor Asians and Africans might feel offended. I’m not making this up.

Source?

It was on the forums a year or so, and I’m certain they only mentioned Cantha. Something about the way that Cantha smushed different Asian cultures/names together didn’t sit well with their Asian audience. It may not seem reasonable, but as an example, many of my Korean friends are pretty racist towards anyone of Japanese descent for historical reasons…

Found the thread (or part of it): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Merged-The-Cantha-Thread/page/3#post1394252

I remember something along those lines- except I remember hearing that specifically the Canthan district of DR was removed on the say-so of someone at NCSoft. Nothing about Cantha as a whole, certainly not anything about Elona, and no word on what specifically caused the change- maybe it was political correctness, or maybe something accidentally was legitimately offensive, or maybe it was solely a marketing move to avoid alienating the asian playerbase they were hoping to expand to. Maybe there was even something that would get the game banned in China.

Bottom line, we don’t know why the district was removed, and there’s no basis to jump to the worst of the possibilities and assume it was simply so that someone didn’t get their feelings hurt, and there’s certainly no basis for saying the alteration of a chunk of a single zone means they “refuse” to revisit entire continents that were very popular from the old game. That’s blowing things completely out of proportion.

Shiren.9532:

I believe it’s during sylvari Personal Story. If your sylvari is of the same cycle as Aife she will be present during one of the instances with the Pale Tree (if not your cycle’s Luminary will replace her). I’m not sure if Trahearne, Caithe or Aife herself mentions it. It’s a really short line stating she’s explored all over Tyria including the Maguuma Wastes. It’s much harder to explore the early personal story due to the arbitrary level lock outs from the New Player Experience. I think you need to be level 20.

I can’t speak for the other storylines, but Shield of the Moon has you meet your Luminary at the end of the first quest. Still takes level 10 with the kitten changes, though.

Mental Paradox.3845:

Fun fact: they refuse to remake Cantha and Elona because poor Asians and Africans might feel offended. I’m not making this up.

Source?

I’m kind of torn on this. It’d be pretty sweet to have story behind them (maybe even enough to get me to try for one), but then, I think the lore is better off without rainbow-surfing unicorns and disco balls.

DONO.8760:

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

DONO.8760:

drops the PC/SJW stuff

I dread to ask, but… what are you counting as “PC/SJW stuff”?

Including women? Having a gay romance?

Women? No. The other stuff distracts the writers from what they should really be focusing on.

Eh, I don’t think so. The Marjory/Kasmeer relationship isn’t any more distracting, narrative-wise, than any romance, and Rox and Braham have been practically invisible this season.

Scarabs, perhaps?

More likely the asuran alphabet… though even then, they just seem to be random letters repeated.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Eirdyne.9843:

Arbitrary creature use more to do with copy-and-pasting being the cheap and easy way than having anything to do with making creatures for a place.

I’m 100% not sure what the hell you mean.

I’m pretty sure they’re talking about the way most mobs don’t seem to have distinct species distribution. Some mobs are better than others, of course- ettins, for instance, tend to make sense, as did drakes up until the latest patches (Ascalon specific drakes in the Maguuma Wastes, often far from any body of water that would constitute a sufficient drake habitat, kind of killed that), whereas skelk varieties beyond the reef or alpine kinds seem to be picked at random, and skale are a baffling assortment of different breeds jumbled across regions and often even sharing territory.

Still, Eirdyne, while regional distinctness of fauna isn’t as ironclad as it was in GW1, I’d say that just makes it more realistic- think of it as similar to the way that the US spans a large variety of environments, but still has common animals that can be found in almost all of the states alongside the more local varieties.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Shiren.9532:

In addition to that, they don’t recognise a sylvari but Aife travelled to the Maguuma Wastes before GW2 launched, did they not see her when she was there?

Where was this mentioned? I don’t recall it.

It’s part of her dialogue the first time you meet her.

I don’t know how it would tie into the theory, but the eagle motif is also common among the Tarnished Coast/Central Transfer Chamber structures in the first game.

We know that Turai Ossa tried to fulfill them in 868. That points to them being available to humans at least 200 years beforehand.

Vigil: Recruit, Crusader, Warmaster, General
Order of Whispers: Initiate, Agent, Lightbringer, Preceptor, Master of Whispers
Durmand Priory: Novice, Scholar/Explorer (ranked the same, but with different roles and tasks), Magister, Steward.

Each group also has miscellaneous titles that don’t seem to be part of the standard rank ladder- I’d guess they’re equivalent to the standard rank and file, or maybe a halfstep up (Tactician may be between Crusader and Warmaster, for instance). For the Whispers, they’re Creator (gadget maker, possibly general tech specialist), Keeper (maintains and oversees safehouse, bases, and the like) and Slayer (never really see what they do, but from their I’d guess that they’re the assassination specialists).

And even Jora was affected to some extent, in that she lost her ability to become the bear. I don’t see the norn risking that to go dig up and poke at some great behemoth that may or may not be the cause- especially when they had a more likely culprit.

Examples off the top of my head:
- Jennah making the population of Ebonhawke and the dragon minions attacking them think that Kralkatorrik came back and branded them all into statues
- The late personal story arc where you order your own allies to be shelled because you saw them as risen, then were mislead by a hallucination of Trahearne, then attacked by an imaginary Flame Legion army and a giant
- The human personal story arc where a device of possibly asuran origin was used in an attempt to overthrow the Queen- the closest to plain mind control I can think of, but notably accomplished by magitech, not mesmers
- The potion in CM explorable that forces the imbiber to tell the truth
-The Nightmare Court spellbinders in Brisban, who are able to take control of the local skritt and cause them to attack their foes

It’s also illuminating to notice where it isn’t used- for instance, despite the spellbinders mentioned above, Faolain never employs that kind of control over Caithe, even though it would make her obsession easily obtainable. The simplest explanation would appear to be that she can’t.

Too tired right now to articulate on what I see as the implications, but maybe I’ll try to whip up something cogent later.