R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’d certainly be easier to know if the prophecies were available to us in full, but from what we do have of them, I think the evidence points to either legitimate precognition or Glint pulling the strings a la Abaddon. Getting a doomed prince, undead rising, and a climactic battle in the Shiverpeaks opening the way to the Ring of Fire, not to mention the interpretation which also includes the Searing, all 800 years in advance, takes more than educated guessing. Of the two, I’m inclined to believe she actually did see the future, at the very least in broad strokes and possibilities, because A.) it’s less tinfoil hat lore nihilism, B.) we now have independent verification that it is possible (thank you, Pale Tree) and C.) it’s hard to credit that a dragon in the Crystal Desert would be able to influence events across three nations to the extent of determining where and when their armies move. I think most likely, given our current, limited understanding of how seeing the future works (although it would be the option that requires Glint to have the most ability to delve said future), is that she was able to pick out the least damaging of several possible outcomes of the Prophecies campaign, and made small nudges through the centuries that butterflyed out to ensure that was the outcome that came to pass, more or less.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
It was one of the scenes glimpsed through the asura gate- a “grassy plain” is all the description we get, though the presence of a gate may one day narrow things down, if we ever learn the boundaries of pre-Primordus asuran civilization.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I don’t know if they knew that Drakkar was there, since they were said to have shunned the region as cursed. Even if they did, they would A.) not know that it was alive (or whatever passes for being alive), B.) have no real reason to believe it was the source of the curse, and C.) not know that the curse could even be destroyed (something we still don’t know, actually- is the corpse of a slain dragon champion still corruptive?). I think they did the logical thing- noted that hanging out in that region was bad, and then promptly ceased to hang out in that region.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Some, hell, most of them might have. Kralkatorrik was last seen not too far from Elona , and we’ve got no idea where Bubbles, Jormag, or Primordus currently are romping. That leaves Zhaitan, who woke up beneath the perfect magic-fueled army of undeath starter kit, and Mordremoth, who has just woken up, not to mention, according to NPC speculation, may literally be rooted in place.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
One question that comes to mind after seeing that map. If Tyria is so vast, why are all the 6 Elder Dragons all concentrated into a tiny little corner of the world? How come there’s no Elder Dragon in Elona? Or Cantha? Or Gwen Yeh or Not Real? :P
Short version- they aren’t as concentrated as they look (we’re looking at four in a region roughly proportional to our Russia) and it’s also the area surrounding where the Bloodstone was made- that is, where their entire remaining food source was consolidated.
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(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
@Konig Are you sure? Trying for myself, that version doesn’t line up either, unless we accept that there’s a length of coast roughly as long as Orr that happens to both run exactly north to south and be on the very edge of the map.
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On the torus theory- thanks to the grid on the new map, it can be seen that the east and west don’t line up. The western landmass extends a subsquare farther south than the eastern one.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
As I psoted in other thread, here is my copypasted theory:
“I think Caithe has a plan of getting close to a big bad (Mordie maybe, though I think Faolain) and needs the egg to gain that persons trust, to show she is on their side.
So she needs to steal the egg, to convince that evul person of her intentions, and then assassinate it her.
She did say “there is no time to explain”, after all. How many similar plots hidden behind “there is no time to explain” have you seen in books/movies/tv shows? Lots and lots I bet.”She doesn’t need the egg to gain Faolain’s trust because they are lovers. She already has her trust. It’s foolish to think that Caithe is going to try to get close enough to Mordy to do a one shot kill. There’s no way a one shot kill could work.
Fair enough, but to turn the scrutiny around, how would the egg possibly be able to help the Pale Tree?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(the Nightmare Court do use spiders and jaguars and wurms, but this is more akin to abusive teaching).
Depends on how seriously you want to take the skin difference between Nightmare spiders and all the other spiders in the region, and the spider tamer’s comment that “once turned, even I can’t restore a spider.” Not much to go on, but a case can be made that there’s more than animal cruelty happening there.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Maybe he’s following the egg like he was following the artifacts in E2?
And then maybe Caithe is taking the egg to the Nightmare Court so Mordy can destroy them (lol)
Considering how far the Master got (seriously, the most powerful user of the best mobility magic in Tyria took 5 episodes to move the length of a small zone?), The Silverwastes infestation would, if anything related to him, have been meant to cut him off.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That or it was changed before launch… didn’t EoD come out before the sylvari overhaul?
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(and it is odd that Mordy stretched north before going east towards civilization).
That’s presuming he spread to the Silverwastes before the attacks on Kessex, Timberline, and IM. From what we’ve seen the last couple of patches, I get the feeling that what we see is just where he’s pushing up, that his real spread is being done underground- and we have no way to measure how far and how thick in which directions that’s gotten, just that we can see it’s pretty beneath the Silverwastes.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I came across this one too late to participate, but I’d certainly be willing to contribute if you feel like trying again!
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I’m almost certain that the purple coloration was just the weird lighting down there. If not, then we also have to explain why Kasmeer suddenly swapped to mourning colors.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
What’s best for Jennah, at least. I’ve no doubt that if the crown was in the wrong and the Ministry in the right, we’d be treating the Shining Blade like we currently do the Ministry Guard (they’re essentially the same thing even as it stands, just serving different powers).
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
A thought that popped into my head with the possibility of the egg being in pain- it’s been a point of speculation for a while around here whether Glint’s offspring would be minions of Kralkatorrik or not. What if it’s not an either/or sort of thing? What if there’s some sort of internal conflict, corrupted nature versus magical ‘nurture’? It’s a bit out there, and it seems unlikely given it’s a complication that wouldn’t add to the story… but then again, the last year we’ve been hearing a lot about the mental nature of dragon corruption and the presumed struggle of Ceara and possiblye Aerin against it…
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s a bit weird, but I’m looking at it as an extension of the inexplicable antipathy that has sprung up between the two since the Queen’s Jubilee. He apparently elaborates more on it if your a noble, and it sounds to me that he doesn’t suspect anything in particular, just that Anise wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t think Kasmeer would be useful to her.
My bet? She’s trying to get Kasmeer to serve as the Shining Blade’s eyes and ears in the nobility, perhaps even the Ministry. Aside from Anise herself, we’ve never heard of any other SB agents able to move in the higher circles.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Zhaitan is “Death and Shadow” – if there’s any “darkness”, it’s Zhaitan via Shadows, if there’s any lies, it’s Zhaitan, who repeatedly lies via his risen.
Mordrem is Plant and Mind, not life which is far far more broad than “plant” or “mind”.
Yes, I was speculating that the Priory was mistaken. Not on any evidence, really, aside from the fact that the spheres the Dragons are assumed to represent seem a bit limited for something that could rip apart the fabric of reality when unbalanced (Crystal? really?), and that some of the potential dragon replacements seem to have attitudes/strengths at odds with their corresponding dragon.
The problem there is that you’d have to assume that the gods were mistaken. That’s a bit harder to swallow, especially if you accept that they’re in the same general category of sphere-based entities as the dragons.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That’s what it’s always been like. Maybe you just never looked up?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
A bit of devil’s advocate here, because I don’t believe it is a secret, but it wouldn’t be because Faolain’s a woman. It’s because she’s the leader of the Nightmare Court. It’d be like having Stalin for an ex.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I won’t mind if we get it back next patch, as long as we resolve whatever’s going on with Caithe in the process. As bad as it might be to rush essentially an entire storyline in one patch, it’s much preferable to having yet another Six-kitten ed “step forward” that leaves more things hanging than resolved. The patch after that, which I guess is supposedly the last patch of the season, can deal with finding out what to do with the egg- and then doing it. The bottom line, though, is that these lines need to actually be meaningfully progressed. No more baby steps along.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s common knowledge among the Nightmare Court, certainly, and I seem to recall a random Grove NPC saying something to the effect of ‘Caithe hasn’t been the same since Faolain left’. I’d say it’s either an open secret or common knowledge. It certainly can’t be what Scarlet was referring to- Caithe refuses to discuss that with us, and we got front row seats to her relationship during TA story.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’m not sure why there should be more than two formal ranks. The Shining Blade are the Queen’s bodyguards and agents. They don’t have a wide enough scope of purpose to require an extensive hierarchy to support it, and additional ranks would just put more layers between what’s going on and the person who’s supposed to be in charge. If Anise is able to keep track of everything that’s happening (something we’ve seen no reason to doubt) then three ranks should be more than sufficient- Master Exemplar to direct everything and attend to the Queen’s personal safety, Exemplars to carry out operations that need to be kept secret (and, if Sea of Sorrows is an indication, to protect other members of the royal house/the monarch when they leave the city), and rank and file agents to fill out the royal guard and carry out less sensitive work (things like assassinating centaur leaders).
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Or ANet will take the more obvious, boring option, and this is just a lead-in to finding out that the Pale Tree being out of commission has made the sylvari as a whole vulnerable.
So are you thinking that this could turn into Caithe having good intention for all the wrong reasons? Something like Caithe found a way to orchestrate the attack that happened during The World Summit. However it went too far so now she is bringing the egg back to the pale tree to heal her?
If Caithe’s head is being messed around with by Mordremoth, I expect it’ll turn out to be straightforward, kill her before she misuses the egg, etc. I don’t buy into the idea that she orchestrated the attack, and I don’t see how the dragon egg would possibly help the Tree. I’m hopeful that there is no mental corruption, and that this has something to do with her relationship with Faolain- perhaps she’s gambling on the baby having Glint’s mental abilities, so she can see what exactly is going on in her ex-lover’s head.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I caught the weird color too, jaken, but I think it was just the lighting down there. Kasmeer’s armor looked black, and everything else was just a bit off.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
- Other, unknown, surviving children of Glint that have already hatched (someone should go count how many eggs are in that lair in GW1…)
21.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Don’t have much to add, because there’s not much to say about this patch. That synopsis really did ruin the only plot progression that occurred, though I do appreciate that they played it in such a manner that we’re unsure if Caithe’s been corrupted or is just working of of justifiable, if private, reasons. Of course, if we learn the answer in the first instance next episode, as we seem to be aiming to, that’ll just feel like an empty attempt to keep us hooked.
The Rytlock teaser didn’t bother me too much- I’d already figured we wouldn’t be seeing him when he wasn’t at all in the trailer last week. ]I suspect he’s going to come back at the season finale, and not before, and we might get some more images or other such hints as we go.
As an added note to the biconics- maybe it’s because I still feel like they’re just taggers on, and not actually friends of mine, but the forced dialogue options there are starting to irritate as much as the Canach ones do. “You’re my rock”? Really?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Caithe was acting very, very weird the entire patch. Not at all like herself. Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable guessing whether her mental state was actually altered or the writers just wanted us to notice her early on.
That said, though I have yet to observe it myself, according to the patch notes we now do have some sort of direct connection between the mordrem and nightmare. It is worth recalling that Caithe was tainted with Nightmare a few years ago- and we only have Faolain’s word to go on to say how well it was removed. My tentative guess is that Faolain and the Nightmare Court are going to directly play into the next patch somehow.
Or ANet will take the more obvious, boring option, and this is just a lead-in to finding out that the Pale Tree being out of commission has made the sylvari as a whole vulnerable.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Sylvari run on meat and plants and other such standard foods. Dragon minions in general show no signs of needing nutrition.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I really don’t see this connection, truth be told. Half of it feels coincidental on the dragons’ part, and the other half is more that the dragons made it their preferred territory – like how Mordremoth is making the Maguuma Wastes into ‘his jungle’.
I’m not seeing that, unless by “jungle” you mean “desert filled with Mordrem and giant vines which may be part of the body of Mordremoth himself”.
Trahearne, and maybe a couple others, refer to “his jungle” as spreading. I assume they mean the vines, but maybe there’s some variation farther behind the front line. We’ll likely find out Tuesday.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Regarding spheres, I would point out that light has been attributed to Dwayna (in GW1 Wintersday dialogue) although this might be a misattribution.
The priests in DR do the same.
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Sorry. I just think the whole PC Wyld Hunt thing had been badly done. In game play terms it has just been Caithe telling us that it is finished, if we bother to talk to her, and Trahearne telling us it has started again, if we bother to talk to him. That’s it. The Wyld Hunt makes no difference to anything whatsoever, seemingly. It should be more important than that. It should be more important than everything!
I agree to a point, but I figure it’s part of the narrative balance. The things the players are doing have to make sense for all the races, which means unless some element can be mirrored between five cultures, it has to be pushed back into the dialogue boxes. Just another place where gameplay necessarily limits storytelling.
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On the quaggan being driven out – there’s conflicting sources on it. Bullablopp says that the quaggans (his village at least) fled the dragons and ran into the krait in shallower waters.
So I think that the main body of quaggan were forced out by krait, but there were some that were forced out by the DSD directly, later on.
A matter further complicated when you get yet other quaggans attributing the same sequence of events to the risen.
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I suspect that our Hunt is to take down the dragons that directly threaten the Pale Tree, or by extension the sylvari race as a whole, or perhaps the Dream (while we don’t know how dependent the Dream is on the Pale Tree, her status as its ‘caretaker’ does suggest her absence would, or now, perhaps does, have a deleterious effect). We felt the call towards Zhaitan when we awoke, at which point the risen were actively menacing the borders of the Grove, and after Zhaitan’s defeat, according to the quote above, the call receded until the world summit- not until we learned of Mordremoth, or until he started pushing his expansion (he’d already gotten as far as the Iron Marches the patch before), but until his minions attacked the Grove.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Even if Vekk didn’t spread it around, the Priory keeping it hushed up still seems in direct opposition to their attempts to publicize Gorr’s belief in the PS. The only way it works is if it was a long-lost writing that just so happened to be conveniently discovered in the last two years.
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I don’t know if it’s breaking apart… there definitely looks to be two layers to it, but both are still in an egg shape, and the Master of Peace appears to be able to hold it from the bottom without difficulty.
Edit: It does look to be larger than before, though… hm.
As for why it would be happening now, I can think of two reasons. First, that whatever was keeping it in stasis was destroyed with the ship bearing it, or maybe just that whatever’s happening is what spurred the Zephyrites to head west in the first place.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
I’m surprised nobody brought this up, but WoodenPotatoes on youtube has some great videos on guild wars 1 and the lore.
Nobody brings it up because I guess general consensus is that WP gets things wrong/puts a lot of his own conjecture into his videos. Which is fine, but if you’re trying to objectively introduce someone into the lore of the GW universe, then having errors and opinions presented as if they’re fact can get a little problematic because other people start spreading false ideas. (But I do really like his videos and he seems like a greta guy with a genuine enthusiasm for the lore)
As a dissenting opinion, I actually think WP is a great way to get people introduced. He’s not always right, but he gets the broad and even not-so-broad strokes down pat, and he consistently does so with enthusiasm. As far as our community in general goes, I think it’s a lot more valuable to have the new guys excited than it is to have them correct. After all, the old hands here are great at correcting people, but not so good at making them want to stick around.
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@narwhal Diovid never suggested that there were druid settlements. He stated that it would not be impossible for there to exist humans who were influenced by the druids or trying to follow in their footsteps.
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Actually… I don’t know that we can say there are just six (or twelve). The historian’s quote is “All those other circles are spheres of influence and powerful magic.” There’s a lot more than twelve circles up there- I count at least 42, overlapping each other to various degrees.
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I imagine having a militia would be standard practice in villages in Kryta. I think Claypool is the only one we specifically see due to circumstances. Sheamor is on the doorstep of Divinity’s Reach and is such probably watched over by the Seraph from DR. Beetletun has Caudecus’ Ministry Guard in place of militia. While Nebo Terrace and Ascalon Settlement both have their defenders supplemented or replaced by Seraph due to the war.
This is more or less how I see it too. As things currently stand, the centaur war effectively means that there’s a seraph garrison in each major settlement, so militias are largely obsolete, at least for the time being. In times of peace, when the Seraph garrisons would presumably be much reduced, it might be more common- although we don’t have any evidence either way.
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Yup. Vision of Glint, in Droknar’s Forge.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The druids are long gone, the shining blade is in Kryta with the Queen, the Ebon Vanguard were all recalled and built Ebonhawke (you can even see their graves in the city, not to mention that EotN is deserted in present time save for ghosts), and Ember Light Camp was created at the time that the Shining Blade went there with the heroes (the only other settlements were Mursaat fortresses). The only one that is possible is that there are the last few White Mantle hiding out in the jungle.
We do know that the Vanguard left people behind when they were recalled, however.
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All good guesses, except maybe for the Ventari and RoF under the human category (pretty sure the first was said to have died out, and the NPC makeup of the second suggests that those outposts were only established as part of our military campaign against the mursaat, likely abandoned as soon as the volcano erupted). I’d also suggest that it’s probable that settlements exist west of Queensdale and Metrica Province, for humans and asura respectively- it just would be odd to have such a harsh transition from a race’s heartlands to unsettled wilderness.
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I think the plausibility of this theory boils down to how long a mursaat’s natural lifespan is. Given the benefit of the doubt and assuming at least some are still alive, I would then consider that the only racial characteristics we’ve seen demonstrated by them is pride, and even more so an ironclad sense of self-preservation. Puppeteering the Mantle is what brought about their near-extinction; in fact, it was what caused the doom they were trying to use the Mantle to prevent, and this happened while the Mantle were at the height of their power. While the Mantle were diminished in power, they kept at it, presumably reasoning that the titans were no longer a factor, and it again resulted in what we currently believe to be a significant loss of their remaining numbers. Today’s Mantle, even assuming all of the bandits are at their disposal, is nowhere near as powerful as they were even at that second attempt, while the forces that brought about the second culling are much more powerful, even accounting for centaur distractions. From what we know of the mursaat, I would expect any that survived the War In Kryta, save only Lazarus, to have dropped direct association with the White Mantle and withdrawn into seclusion until they became strong enough to be secure from their enemies- which, with the EDs now romping about, probably means some point after they go back to sleep.
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Or all sufficiently talented mesmers have, at any rate- I suspect our player characters, particularly seeing as they’re currently set post PS and S1, are quite a bit more advanced than your normal member of their profession.
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https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Charr-vs-Human-vs-Asura-vs-Norn Here’s a recent discussion on that war scenario, and in the process it hits most of the points you make, although it does largely exclude the sylvari.
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@Jordo also a likely factor is that the facets will almost certainly not be showing up again, whereas the new mordrem models can be used in all the rest of the “main” storyline to come, as well as remain as permanent parts of the Silverwastes, and possibly other maps to come. That’s a better return of investment than a single instance would be.
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This map places it north of Istan, about even with central Kourna.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
There are three explicit mentions of humans in that dialogue- that she learned language from them, that she learned that “humans and other races” were not her enemies, and that she became a protector of the Tyrian races, which some exceptional humans recognized as important. That last one could plausibly only be referring to modern day Zephyrites, but the way he tells the story puts two mentions to humans, in specific, before the end of the last rise.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.