Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If Bauer was not a lair in his journal about his praises of the Unseen Ones, he might have set Caudecus up giving that corrupted aspect to him while helping Xera revive Lazarus with 4 of him.

If it were that easy, though, I would’ve expected him to be revived much, much sooner. The fact that Xera had to go on an extended hunt for these things, and the dialogue around her search, suggests that Lazarus had been split for so long that most of the Mantle had forgotten he’d done it. Maybe they just couldn’t figure out the ritual to revive him sooner, but would Lazarus really have not left instructions?

draxynnic.3719:

Either way, it doesn’t matter what definition people in the real world might apply to the term ‘god’. What matters is what Tyrians call a god.

When it comes to whether they count as gods in Tyria, but the main thrust of Cristalyan’s point here doesn’t seem to be that old tiresome argument over definitions. They’re expressing personal disappointment in the direction ANet has taken with the Six, and in that context, real-world analogues and perspectives do apply, in that they inform a player’s response to the story.

To expand on Narcemus’ answer, Malaquire’s hint suggests he was at least 1,084 years old when we last saw him. Similarly, Livia was at least 198 when she appeared in SoS. If she’s still alive today, that goes up to 272. We don’t know for sure how old Doric was when he died, but given the Scriptures of Dwayna, I’d say he was at least 130.

Those are all extraordinary cases, though. The longest-lived human we find a gravestone for in GW2 was about 95 when they died, and most of the ones who seemed to die of old age were in their 80s.

It’s cursive New Krytan. Says “Lion’s Arch Aerodrome”.

On possibilities- it’s possible he was distracted. It’s possible that god magic doesn’t register with Elder Dragons as a meal. It’s possible that Balthazar is now lacking that bloodstone magic, thus explaining why he wasn’t able to oneshot Marjory the way he did dozens of Mantle. It’s possible that he was in the process of attacking but the machine paralyzed him- more on that in a second. It’s possible that he couldn’t see Balthazar- more on that in a second too. It’s possible that he was ordering the destroyers to break the barriers and waiting for them to drop down on Balthazar from above. It’s possible the magic he had already come to the Ring of Fire to feed on was important to him, or blocked his ability to sense Balthazar. It’s possible that Balthazar, who Taimi admits knows more about magic than even the asura savant in the room, knew how to mask to ‘scent’. It’s possible that whatever the druids were dong to ‘balance’ Primordus was interfering with him. But his positioning does not look like there was a battle. The chamber is intact. His snout is barely poking out of the wall. Unless he was spitting flaming loogies at the god of fire, he was not in a position to attack. Sure, some of those are more likely than others, but we lack the facts to narrow it down to a workable field.

On positioning- we know he was under Draconis Mons. We don’t know he was in that cavern. It seems a bizarrely vulnerable place to stop, just far enough in to expose himself but not far enough to control the space. It doesn’t seem a good spot to stop willingly, especially if he knew a magically adept foe was present, as you suggest.

On Elder Dragons sensing magic- what we saw was Mordremoth’s energy dispersing along the ley-lines. To extend the river analogy from the other thread: if you notice the stream next to your house suddenly flood, and follow it back to a broken dam, that doesn’t mean you’re able to see the broken dam from your house. Speaking of Mordremoth, his tendrils did seem to home in on magic, but that’s not conclusive either when his main vines had already spread as far as the Iron Marches. Being able to find a small signature, even several miles away, doesn’t mean you can find a massive signature on the other side of the continent, not without assuming several things about how that sense works that we’re just not in a position to know. I’m not saying it’s impossible, in fact I believe it’s probable, but it’s not a solid enough case for me to be comfortable using it to rule out avenues of other theories.

Amaimon.7823:

I’m gonna nitpick a little and say the leylines have no association with the elder dragons.

If we’re using the river analogy, they do. If all the water in the world is locked up in six massive glaciers, then when those glaciers start to melt, every river is going to have one as its source.

Sure, there might be dried out beds from an earlier age, but a riverbed without any water isn’t a river. A ley-line without any magic isn’t a ley-line. And from our current understanding of the Tyrian magic cycle, only the ley-lines that trace back to the Elder Dragons, one way or another (or maybe a bloodstone), will have magic in them.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The fact that he survived more than five minutes while in a weakened state in front of Primordus itself before activating the machine – saying nothing to the horde of magic-devouring destroyers before Primordus – is proof enough that Balthazar has some defenses to having his magic devoured by Primordus, if not outright immunity.

I don’t know. That argument suggests Primordus made some sort of effort to consume Balthazar, but the fact that the dragon was clear on the other side of a chamber the size of the map seems to me like there wasn’t such a fight. I’d think it more likely that Balthazar set up, waited for Primordus to surface, and then flipped the machine on before the dragon could close the distance; or else that Primordus didn’t take any heed of Balthazar setting up in midair on the other side. That could be because Primordus couldn’t sense Balthazar’s divine magic, which is the form of immunity we’ve speculated bloodstones have- but it could just as easily be that drained Balthazar didn’t have enough power to pick up on, and the dragon didn’t feel it was worth moving to swat a little bug hovering in midair on the other side of the room, or that because we only saw the tip of a snout, Primordus literally couldn’t see what was going on.

If that’s the case, though, isn’t what Scarlet did, redirecting the ley lines to Mordremoth, like making water flow uphill? And if magic is locked in a one-way source -> destination journey, then with the amount of damage it’s causing just passing through the anomaly maps, there might be some catastrophic consequences for wherever it’s pooling; be it through environmental instability, drawing in an Elder Dragon, or, as we possibly saw in Rising Flames, both.

OriOri.8724:

Amaimon.7823:

3. Yes, this was, sadly, cut content. There’s evidence in the story that suggested Mallyck (or his original) was going to be a part of the story, but it was cut. I don’t know why, maybe the story got too complex, or confusing for anet’s taste.

It was almost certainly cut because ANet was running out of time on HoT and just didn’t have enough resources to implement everything they wanted to implement.

I’m not saying time wasn’t a factor, but the devs have stated the decision was made for narrative reasons, that the urgency of a plot defined by a rescue mission couldn’t allow for side trips. As it stands, I think the damage was done anyway between the egg and Rata Novus, and they’ve admitted there’re things they wished they’d done differently, but I can at least understand what they were aiming for.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Although, I’m actually not sure what you’re getting at with your first point. Having the Shadow of the Dragon attack us in the tutorial seems to support that sylvari aren’t on Mordremoth’s side.

I disagree, it could very easily be Mordremoth trying to take control of the Pale Tree so he would have another blightling tree further East. Considering that the Pale Tree herself can’t seem to fight it for whatever reason (being that you are recruited in the tutorial to help kill it), this would make sense if it happens to be the case. He just wasn’t expecting every newborn of this tree to actually rise up and resist the corruption.

Right. He could have been trying to take control, which means that she was not on his side. That’s what I was saying.

Natto.5819:

Queen Jenna is powerful, but didn’t show her true power until just a couple of months ago because she had no choice. In lore, she could have protected herself, but instead called Logan to defend her. I take that as trying to hide her powers back then to avoid showing the world how powerful she is, which would make people wonder where she got all that magical strength from.

Besides the points that have already been raised, about the barrier being explicitly prepared in advance and the possibility of other spellcasters supporting it, there’s still the question of what a city-wide barrier would’ve actually done for Jennah at Ebonhawke. The Branded were already inside the city walls, and in any case, the bubble around Divinity’s Reach doesn’t seem to stop people moving in and out. It’s not like the charr were launching cannonballs or Kralkatorrik had stuck around to spit crystals.

Add to that the fact that it’s quite possible Jennah learned to be a better fighter because of the Ebonhawke incident. Keep in mind that she was only deemed old enough to take the throne four years before Kralkatorrik woke up. Depending on what the age of majority is in Kryta, that puts her at roughly around 20 then, and roughly around 30 now. A decade is plenty of time for a young woman to take a hard-learned lesson to heart and learn how to defend herself.

These aren’t plot holes, contradictions within the story, just neglected plot threads that ANet hasn’t gotten back to. The Nightmare Court and Malyck are confirmed to have originally been part of the plan for HoT that got cut for scoping reasons, and the first episode of S3 confirmed that anti-sylvari sentiment is still going on in the background.

Although, I’m actually not sure what you’re getting at with your first point. Having the Shadow of the Dragon attack us in the tutorial seems to support that sylvari aren’t on Mordremoth’s side.

Possible, but in my opinion, unlikely. Just freely traveling the Mists- let alone with an entire population at your heels- is the next best thing to unheard of even in modern day Tyria with all its magic. The odds of someone without even a scrap of magic managing it… well, it might not be impossible, but it’s the next best thing.

And then there’s the odd suggestions that the Six were somehow involved in the end of the last dragonrise, possibly long before they brought humans to Tyria. I agree that we don’t have the whole story right now, but I think the indications are that they’re more important than we (currently) think they are, not less.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It seems pretty clear what the ley lines are. From the very beginning to even now they are solely presented as the flow of magic, like water or wind currents but for magic. The “paths of least resistance” for magic to move through.

Of course. The trouble is that the two analogies used, wind and rivers, have very different implications. Most of note for this conversation, if ley lines are rivers, that would imply they have at least one source and at least one place where they pool; but if ley lines are winds, it would suggest they’re just a static volume moving around without a source or destination.

Most likely, ANet means they have some of the properties of each, but the question of which properties could wind up very important to our resolution of the Elder Dragon arc. Thus, “unclear.”

It’s unclear what exactly leylines are, but it’s safe to say they aren’t cracks in reality. The devs have compared them to both rivers and air currents, but either way, they’re just channels through which magic naturally moves around in Tyria, and not a source of that magic.

They’ve got temperamental, chaos, and whim, and nothing in there (or in any of the others) about being stable, let alone one of the most stable gods. Sure, it’s only how a portion of humanity views her- but aside from a single supposedly first-hand account, or maybe two, the only insight we have into Lyssa is the views of her followers. Given that, I think what “some say” deserves more weight than you’re giving it, even if it’s not necessarily right.

Xenon.4537:

However, your scenario doesn’t account for the apparent increase of magic in the world. The whole point of the story is that too much magic is building up in the world and causing it to destabilize, and the elder dragons are supposed to eat the extra magic to calm the world down. If magic is always just there and flows through leylines like blood vessels, then the total amount of magic never changes. You are suggesting a closed system, but I don’ think that’s the case. It looks to me like Tyria is not a closed system at all. It is receiving an abundance of extra energy from an external source we have yet to identify.

The idea, as it’s been presented to us, is that the extra magic comes from the dragons, who are never supposed to empty out. Imagine your closed system consists of two containers. One container (representing the dragons put together) can hold almost all of the magic in the system, leaving the other container (representing Tyria) with very little. This is what we’re told happens naturally at the end of a dragon cycle, without bloodstones making it complicated. The Tyria container is smaller, though. It can’t hold all the magic, but luckily, before the dragons are drained out they wake up and reverse the flow again.

Except now we’re killing them. The dragon container is suddenly shrinking, and the magic is being forced into the Tyria container. The pressure is already dangerous, and if the dragon container shrinks again…

it’s not a perfect analogy (bloodstones, Aurene, and the surviving dragons all complicate it somewhat), but it’s more or less the basic idea ANet’s communicated to us. Whether it’s actually true, or whether there’s another piece of information waiting in the wings to change the whole puzzle, is an open question.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Squee: As far as I know, nothing ever calls Lyssa chaotic or unpredictable. If anything, she’s among the most stable of the gods.

From the Nightfall manual:

“The patron goddess of Mesmers wears many masks, appearing in myriad forms. Patrons of the arts effusively praise her—particularly in the courts of wealthy Vabbi—but some fear her as a temperamental goddess. Behind her beautiful façade, some say, she maintains a deep communion with chaos. Displays of art and culture please her, but her wrath is terrible to behold. Her followers use her magic for illusion, trickery, and deception, twisting the magic of others to suit their own goals. By her whims, her enemies are brutalized by despair and hopelessness, while her beautiful followers are elevated to heights of rapture.”

Granted, the other two manuals don’t mention that side of her, but on the other hand the Nightfall manual is the only one to go into that much detail.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The major problem with your suppositions, Sock, is that during GW1 people had contact with Balthazar still

We had contact with his servants, but not Balthazar himself. If he became a conniving, uncaring deity that far back, there’s no reason to believe that he’d have brought his followers up to speed.

I’m not sure I have a specific theory at this point. The timeline weirdness gets in the way.

If the dagger was used to kill a prisoner, that puts Balthazar there before the riot and following massacre. The fact that the prison’s (relatively) intact indicates that it wasn’t attacked by a god. That really leaves three options: A.), he arrived after the mursaat were gone, bypassing Cairn and the statues without bothering Deimos; B.) he arrived before the mursaat were gone, either dealing with them cordially or infiltrating without ending up in a battle; or C.) he arrived before the mursaat were gone as a prisoner. Either B or C would likely mean that he was already weakened back in GW1. It’s hard to see how he’d be captured, or stoop to dealing with or otherwise sparing beings whose followers were actively trying to stomp out his own, if he had the power to avoid it. Either A or B begs the question of why he’d go there to begin with- that’s not to say that there aren’t any number of possible explanations, just that I don’t see anything in what we currently know that would suggest an answer.

But on Balthazar being Lazarus all along… wouldn’t it be better for him to drop the disguise when the titans came after the mursaat than to split his essence, and then go through all the trouble that followed, including two hundred years of being incapacitated? Sure, Balthazar might’ve already been weakened by then, but at that point you have the same difficulties as the prisoner theory (why would he be weakened so long ago?) in addition to all new difficulties (why would Balthazar be instrumental in founding a competing faith? More importantly, why would he then act to preserve that faith after it had served its purpose, assuming that Lazarus was probably the ‘He’ who ordered the Mantle to hide in the jungle? Why would Balthazar trust the knowledge to bring him back to the followers he’d deceived, who would destroy him in an instant if they knew the truth, instead of to the powerful worshipers who truly did have faith and saw it as their sacred duty to help their god combat supernatural threats?)

Natto.5819:

She thinks differently from the other gods. If Anet says the Six left the world to let humans fend for themselves, Lyssa is the only person who’d probably step back in while the others would be focused on something else.

While Lyssa’s the only one with a known history of defying the other gods to remain with humans, she’s certainly not the only one attached to them. Dwayna is practically defined by compassion. Kormir was a Tyrian human, who made clear at the end of Nightfall that she’d watch out for her allies. Until this last episode, Grenth was the only god to have recent contact with Tyria.

It’s impossible to say for sure given how little we know, but with we have to work with, Balthazar and Melandru sound like the only gods who would ignore humanity for the sake of a bigger picture.

That’s part of an entire weapon set. For that matter, pacifist Dwayna has one too. I don’t think the Black Lion skins mean much beyond Evon being willing to exploit human religion.

Now that the big topics are dying down, it seems an opportune time to get into the little ones (although this might reignite a big one).

For those who don’t know, on a table in a cave in the back of the mercenary camp in the new map, there’s a collection of unlabeled objects you can interact with, including this letter. (Here’s a thank you to Konig for already having it up on the wiki.)

So… Balthazar used to have a dagger, apparently a very good one, and the devs decided it’s worth sneaking in a mention of it. This is odd for two reasons. First, at face value, it just doesn’t seem important. Maybe it’s an artifact infused with god magic or some such, but in the past Balthazar has been associated almost exclusively with greatswords, making a dagger an odd choice for a Chekov’s Gun. The phrasing doesn’t help- the mercs look to be treating it as an opportunity to kiss up, but there’s no mention of the missing dagger being magic or particularly important beyond being well made, and Balthazar himself certainly seems to have bigger things on his mind.

The other reason- the last patch, Head of the Snake, introduced a well-made, suspiciously out of place dagger, with no clear connection to the other things going on around it and with no obvious reason for us to interact with it… and it was in the raid. It particularly stands out because the raid had a lot of item-based mysteries that you slowly unravel by interacting with all manner of random objects, but A.) the dagger was the next-to-only object that didn’t tie into anything else, besides possibly a murder, and B.) your character comments on it being out of place but doesn’t find any evidence of where it came from.

Are the devs suggesting that Balthazar was in the Bastion of the Penitent? If so, why? The dagger may have been used to kill a prisoner during the escape attempt, and if so it doesn’t seem likely that Balthazar happened along after the fact. That would put him there during the prison’s operation. Was he a prisoner there? Holding a god seems like quite a stretch, even for the mursaat, and the timeline is strange with the prison being abandoned during GW1… but it would open up more depth for the Lazarus thing. If the mursaat, or someone connected to them, are the enemies Balthazar was referring to, then using Lazarus as his cover could be more than just a narrative excuse to cash in on fan nostalgia and tie up the Mantle plot thread.

This is still, years after launch, the best source on the Inquest.

To go through your questions one by one:

*They’re set up as a pyramid structure, and as to their goals: “Gathering information in its pure, crystalline form is their intention, and they will stop at nothing less than the sum of all knowledge. Indeed, the ultimate goal of Inquest research is to achieve control of the Eternal Alchemy, and with it, all of Tyria.”

*Yes. The above article states that the Inquest are organized towards their common goal, even if individual members, and maybe even labs, don’t know how they fit into the bigger picture.

*We don’t know who their leader was, or even if they have a single leader or a council or similar body. It might have been Kudu, since he ran their largest lab, but we’ve never had that confirmed. I don’t think it could possibly be Yahk- when you talk to him, he sounds more like a spokesperson than someone of real consequence. Similarly, I don’t think it’s Flax- he’s ruthless, but it’s been stated that he’s only using the Inquest, and he doesn’t seem to trust them. Either way, though, killing a leader isn’t likely to dissolve such a well-organized entity.

*Speculating here, but I imagine all of their research is at least potentially meaningful. They are still asura, so they’re likely to have their share of dud ideas and deadly mishaps, but they don’t seem wasteful enough to set up a lab in the far corner of the continent without a clear goal in mind.

On the Balthazar hint- the sense I got from the PoI, with the way they talked about small hints, is that they’re trying to avoid another ‘twist’ becoming popularly accepted in advance. I think they over-corrected towards obscure this time, but all the same, it’s a reasonable concern to have- at the glacial pace the plot moves, while the LS model also denies the opportunity for hefty chunks to come out at once, even a minor concrete hint will almost certainly be dissected in full by the time that the next release comes (never mind the reveal), and the low standard of evidence our community requires for theorycrafting means that the twist will be stumbled on, well-publicized, and accepted as probable fact by a portion of the playerbase before the devs can deliver their climactic reveal. As it stands, it happened anyway- WP was speculating on it as early as March- but it sounds like that has more to do with the leaks than the hints.

On mercenaries- I find it interesting to note that he didn’t draw from all races. The mercenaries are exclusively human and charr, with the Inquest forming their own bubble enclave in a different part of the cavern. That might be a result of him prioritizing the races with a standing military- appropriate for a god of war- but at the very least it suggest he didn’t just pick a guild up off the streets in LA. I don’t actually expect the devs to ever give them more of a treatment than plot convenience canon fodder, but there’s room for me to be pleasantly surprised.

The motive the mercs state is hard to take at face value, though. Balthazar wants troops loyal to gold, not faith… first off, that begs the question of where the gold came from- maybe all those donations from GW1?- but it also doesn’t square well with our view of the Six. Balthazar might not have been encouraging blind fanaticism, but he certainly seemed to court followers- in fact, just judging from the Scriptures, he was the most indiscriminate about it. Dwayna and Lyssa and Grenth handpicked individuals, Melandru forcefully converted a tribe that wronged her, but Balthazar laid claim to an entire army.

I don’t buy that the humans are too imperiled for it, either. There’s been several indications over the years that Kryta is moving troops away from the centaur war, and the patch notes said the Mantle who followed Caudecus have been handily mopped up and dispersed.

The idea that he might not want his followers to realize he’d become something less than they’d expected seems logical, but it doesn’t satisfy. It’s not a very godly thing to be worried about, especially in a setting that’s never pretended gods are powered by their worshipers, and it has an element of caution and nervousness that doesn’t square with what we see him do in the final instance. I like Corax’s idea better, that he, and maybe the rest of the Six, are burned out on the whole worship thing. It’d fit with the previous explanations for their absence, which suggested that they felt they were causing humans more harm than good, and it’d also fit the new Balthazar out to destroy the world. If you’re still feeling any twinge of doubt, guilt, or shame, having your loyal, misguided followers help you kill them all isn’t nearly as comfortable as working alongside your sworn enemies and sellswords who’re only out for a profit. On the bigger picture, I think it also makes for a much more interesting character. What becomes of a god who no longer wishes to be idolized?

The achievements do refer to them as destroyer wyverns. Unless we’re given some concrete reason to believe otherwise, the model is close enough that I’m willing to take them at their word, and mark up the differences to the magma bug aesthetic.

It might depend on the charr. Ember certainly seemed to regard her as a hero, but that might come down to her personal reverence for what amounted to the charr feminist movement.

She does not- and if you think about it, it makes sense. She’s a hero now, but at the time of her death she was upheld as the worst of villains by an oppressive regime that would’ve had the motivation and the power to ensure she wasn’t honored. Any memorial or statue would’ve been erected long after her death, probably at a time when no one had any idea what she looked like… and if that memorial does exist, I would expect it to be in the land of her legion, Blood, not in the Ascalon maps we have access to. Maybe we’ll see one in the future?

It wasn’t explicitly part of any of the main stories, but something they added into the game in the GW1 version of the New Player Experience after Eye of the North. The Trial was later still, as a sort of prologue to War In Kryta. Wiki article here.

The curious thing is that the golems didn’t just go after Prince Bokka in Vabbi. Emperor Kisu of Cantha and Princess Salma in Kryta were also targeted.

Idon’t think we can rule out planning Joko to be the mystery client all along. There was a lot of chatter, before GW Beyond was canceled, that the next chapter would be centered on him and Elona.

Sure, but that’s not much help in a noisy, fragrant, foreign environment like the Magus Falls.

Ogwom.7940:

Burtnik.5218:

Ogwom.7940:

Also side note,
Maybe it was Menzies (if he gained Divinity) that Rytlock saw in the mists that blinded him. The mark on his blindfold is similar to the one engraved on the chest of Deimos.

Too bad hes not blind. It was already explained..

“A revenant’s signature blindfold isn’t mandatory, either, as revenants don’t become blind as a natural result of their profession. Most of them only wear a blindfold as a tool to help them commune with the legends, who are able to perceive the world through their own senses.”

Pretty sure he talked about it ingame in HOT story.

Ah okay, thanks for the clarification.

I thought it was just Rytlock who was blind somehow.

At the moment, it’s not clear. We know from the post that not all revs are blind, but we don’t know the specific situation with Rytlock. He seems too… pragmatic, and self-reliant, to cover his eyes and rely on another entity’s senses if he could just do the seeing for himself.

lakdav.3694:

I wonder if we would have more to go on now if we had the Abaddon’s fall fractal way back, after Cut-throat Politics. I suspect that was a way for the devs to decide if we knew about ley-lines first, or about whatever is going on with the human gods. I suspect that fractal would have some of the key information we are missing, and this looks like the best time to go back to that project.

Absolutely agreed. Although, if voting for Thaumanova is what caused the gods to come back now, instead of in the middle of Scarlet’s arc… I think I’m happy we waited. The Season 3 model feels like a much better platform for this kind of plot, and ANet’s writing has improved immensely since those days.

draxynnic.3719:

she’s not very good at actually dealing damage.

Except for the time she one-shots three Mantle in a row?

I don’t think it’s that she’s worse at doing damage than defending, I think it’s that she prefers defending to attacking, as a matter of political necessity. That difference in experience might mean her plot-altering powers are all defensive, but if nothing else, she’s at least on par with the PC where offensive magic is concerned.

I’d say it is a good point. If one of the five choices ANet gives you to flesh out your character is to feel like you have a personal connection with Balthazar, and then when Balthazar enters the story, your character is as quick as anyone else to condemn him, that’s rolling back personalization that they offered you.

Jaken.6801:

We can rule out Taimi as a focus point anyway, as she is our constant follower via coms, so “focus” might be a stretch.

I’d disagree with that. In previous episodes, she’s been our go-to exposition dump, but in this one we actually see character development for… I think the first time this season, actually, including her return to personal involvement.

Kas and Marjory didn’t feel like a focus so much as an update, combined with setting up for a later focus. Kas got her title back offscreen, she’s been working with Anise, their relationship is still strained, check check check, and then there’s Kas’ crisis of faith and Marjory’s injury to pay off later. Not that that’s a bad thing- the biggest problem with the biconics in the first two seasons is that they were being forced into plots where they didn’t really fit, and there were so many of them that they either overwhelmed the narrative (portions of HoT) or faded into background elements (Rox).

draxynnic.3719:

I think part of that was that the Order of Whispers didn’t believe the dragons could be killed, while the Priory thought the answer might be found in researching the dragons… essentially what Taimi was doing. Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths were both essentially a combination of the Vigil and Priory approaches, and when they proved to work, the Whispers assumption that killing them was impossible was overturned.

I agree, but I feel that makes it worse, not better. They didn’t just put the Vigil approach on the pedestal, they discredited the other two- the Order of Whispers was wrong, and the Priory wasn’t going to pan out on time. (Personally, I didn’t see much Priory in either of the kills. It takes a lot of reading between the lines to figure out what happened with Zhaitan, but it seems to me to have been a result of the Inquest data Zojja liberated from CoE, maybe supplemented by her own study under Snaff, combined with Gorr’s research, which the Priory had no hand in until the later stages. Mordremoth came down to the Commander taking a lucky detour and then experiencing a plot-driven epiphany at the appointed moment. The Priory approach, on the other hand, always felt to me like a careful study of how the elder races survived, and not taking any stupid risks until they figured out what they were facing. The Glint’s legacy subplot seems like a natural continuation of that mindset, but the disaster with the Pact fleet was about as far from it as you can get.)

But yes, E5 feels like a shift in approach. I just hope it manifests into something longer term, and doesn’t end up as a blip in the plot.

I don’t think we’ve been getting any kind of ‘we shouldn’t stop them from trying to kill us’ vibe. We’re just going to need to get smarter about how we stop them.

One of my biggest problems of the Pact was that it essentially took the Vigil method as ‘correct’ and reduced the other two orders to supplementing their strategy. I wouldn’t mind if the story took a break from hitting dragons with a stick to explore putting them back to sleep, like the Whispers wanted, or digging into the past cycle to find out if there’s a smarter way of handling things, like the Priory wanted. And yes, hitting them with a stick when appropriate, but there’s room for other options to be pursued in tandem.

lakdav.3694:

because there was definitely no orange/fiery beam shooting out from the device to somewhere in the distance.

Actually, there was. I got the Fancy Flier by having someone else head down and break the seals, and while I was dropping down to join them I had a minor burst of panic when the beams started up. The first one was definitely orange, the second blue, and they kept switching back and forth.

Edit: Just ran through it again, and it looks like the cycle runs like this:
1. Blue energy shoots down from above, into the machine.
2. Blue energy shoots from the machine into Primordus.
3. Orange energy shoots from Primordus into the machine.
4. Orange energy shoots up from the machine.
5. Blue energy shoots down from above… and so on.

On Balthazar’s foe- my bet is either on the dragons or something new. The phrasing he uses is “But they will see me now,” indicating that ‘they’ hadn’t before. That rules out the established godly antagonists- Dhuum, and especially Menzies- and it might even indicate that the foe wasn’t aware that they were weakening Balthazar. That feels like it fits the dragons, although that would mean that the gods are more closely connected to Tyria than we’d already thought.

Or it could be something completely new and out of left field, in which case trying to anticipate it is a wasted effort. For now, I don’t think we have enough to go on to build any truly solid theories.

lakdav.3694:

How exactly did he know what that device was meant to do? I thought Taimi kept it a secret. How could he operate it (I dont think a god of brute methods should be able to operate asura magitech that was purposefully designed in a way that other asuras dont know what it does), let alone change it in a way that lets him absorb what energy Primordus bleeds out when hit by the Jormag-beam? Also, wouldnt we need another similar device at the close proximity of Jormag’s dragon form for this to work both ways? The whole concept was, I thought, to use two dragons power against each other, so it should only work both ways.

The device didn’t really seem to have a range. Taimi made it sound like it’d be as simple as pressing a button in the Rata Novus lab- as long as it didn’t blow up in our faces.

Sure, Balthazar took it down to the Primordus chamber, but I figured that was because he’d already secured the chamber as part of his previous plan, whatever it was he was intending to do before he learned about the machine, and that made it the safest place for him to phase out without the machine being tampered with.

Operating it seems to be passed off as part of being a god. As a being of (according to the scanner) pure magical energy who’s been around for who knows how long and at least used to rule a swath of the Mists, it makes sense he’d better understand a device that interfaces with the inner workings of the universe than Taimi, or even Omadd, did. I think there was a line in there where Taimi came out and admitted she didn’t understand what he’d managed to do with the thing.

Knowing about the machine? I’m drawing a blank on that one, but it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility. We know from Rising Flames that Taimi had subverted some of Phlunt’s people into working for her (and she had to send someone out to get those dragon minions), so it’s not like the secrecy was water-tight. It deserves an explanation, absolutely, but it can be explained.

More thoughts later, but @Konig regarding the mirror- when you examine it as a human character, you get a bit more information: “The decorative elements on it resemble those you’ve seen used by mesmers, and those are Lyssa’s symbols around the edge. This was definitely god magic, though now it’s broken and has no magic left.” Further, when Taimi picks it up, you can see the back is in the image of one of the masks worn by the Avatar of Lyssa . I don’t like that the characters are so quick to take those things at face value, but the connection to Lyssa was there.

Not inactive, and not a result of sleep- when the machine booted up, all of the destroyers around us up and died. It’s possible that that was caused by leaking Jormag energies affecting the nearby area-or that mixing Jormag energies with Primordus radiated out to kill his minions as well, or that the shock of the procedure echoed back through the minion hive mind and caused fatal trauma, or that Primordus is different and his minions are created to die if they’re out of direct contact, or that killing a dragon through manipulating the All is different from killing a dragon through other means, or that Balthazar was able to use the machine to smite Primordus’ minions, or, or, or…

We’re in completely unprecedented territory here-thus wild card- but I think we can safely say that A.) enough things are different about what happened that we can’t expect the minions to respond the same way as they do when a dragon goes to sleep naturally, or when Zhaitan and Mordremoth died, and B.) that whatever happened to the destroyers around us would, under most explanations, also have happened to icebrood under the same conditions, since the process was supposed to go both ways.

Spoilers, obviously. It’s too early in the morning to figure out what I’m doing wrong with the tags, but you have been warned.

I’m… doubtful that it’ll be so easy. Zhaitan held on to Orr for ‘only’ 107 years, and four years of Pact effort later it seems there’s still no end to the risen in sight. Jormag had the Far Shiverpeaks for 165, and the norn aren’t nearly as organized as the Pact. And that’s assuming that Jormag is asleep. If our fiery friend was sucking up more of Primordus’ magic than Jormag’s, the ice dragon might have come out better off.

(The wild card is what we experienced in the instance. If it wasn’t just the destroyers near us who died, but all destroyers, everywhere? And the same thing happened to the icebrood? There might suddenly be a lot of free real estate up north.)

Got curious and went looking. This is the bugger in question:

Arachnia is a former spider god of ambiguous canonicity hinted at in GW1 datamining. There’s a theory that it was Abaddon’s predecessor as god of secrets/knowledge. Mem’s first three paragraphs seem to be speculating that Arachnia was taking over Abaddon from within.

I don’t have a clue what the last two are supposed to mean.

Ardid.7203:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Ardid.7203:

An world that lets you put in it centaurs, humans with wings, talking bears and giant ants with tentacles without any reasoning behind except “god made them that way” is fundamentally different from a “big bang” that set a bunch of basic rules that must be fulfilled by every aspect of the universe.

And that’s where we’re disagreeing. Providing basic rules that result in those same forms isn’t fundamentally different than letting a god make them, it just kicks the can back a couple steps to provide a somewhat different flavor. It is fundamentally different from a setting that just doesn’t have tentacle ants, but at that point you’re not talking science vs. mythology. You’ve moved up to realism vs. fantasy.

No, when you create a world IT IS fundamentally different if there are basic rules governing it or not. They do change everything (Just compare Harry Potter with The Last Air Bender). I have NEVER been talking about mythology vs science. These are stories: I’m talking about (meta)physical constants vs arbitrary authoral preferences, about internal verisimilitude vs “a wizard did it”.

Ah, gotcha. Apologies. I’ve never seen “a god did it” as being incompatible with internal consistency, but I do agree that internal inconsistency is vexing.

Ardid.7203:

An world that lets you put in it centaurs, humans with wings, talking bears and giant ants with tentacles without any reasoning behind except “god made them that way” is fundamentally different from a “big bang” that set a bunch of basic rules that must be fulfilled by every aspect of the universe.

And that’s where we’re disagreeing. Providing basic rules that result in those same forms isn’t fundamentally different than letting a god make them, it just kicks the can back a couple steps to provide a somewhat different flavor. It is fundamentally different from a setting that just doesn’t have tentacle ants, but at that point you’re not talking science vs. mythology. You’ve moved up to realism vs. fantasy.

The Greyhawk.9107:

To try to tie this back to GW lore, one could make the argument that one of the (if not the) defining elements of GW’s world and lore, The Mists, could also be seen as “convenient” and “cheap”. Everything comes from the Mists, in one way or anther. Gods? The Mists. Demons? The Mists. Alternate Realms? The Mists. Strange unexplainable phenomena? The Mists. Lore explanation for PvP and WvW? The Mists. Its not hard to view many lore concepts in many different works as convenient, cheap, or lacking in creativity if you look at it in too narrow of a fashion. And even if a concept at the end fails to interest someone doesn’t mean that the creator wasn’t putting in an actual effort or somehow lacks creativity. Some ideas just aren’t for everyone.

This is getting at something important- any ultimate origin is going to be convenient. The Book of Genesis, the Big Bang, they’re both very convenient explanations. That’s just the nature of the beast- it’s convenient that something allowed your setting’s universe/life/whatever to exist, but what’s the alternative? A story where nothing exists is going to be very difficult to write.

Now, you can choose how many layers you want to put your convenience behind, and it might be enough that nobody in-universe knows about it, or enough that you out-of-universe never need to consider it… but how many layers, and how much complexity, is ‘enough’ is going to be a matter of personal taste.

Sock.2785:

Taimi: “Mortal danger, a mursaat/not a mursaat on the way.”

Kasmeer: “He’s on the way? What should we do?”

It’s reasonable to think that Lazarus is on the way to Taimi’s laboratory in an attempt to learn more about the Elder Dragons, specifically Primordus perhaps, and it’s probable he was directed there by none other than Marjory herself. However, it’s Taimi to inform Kasmeer that he’s on the way there and, assuming Marjory is already with them, the necromancer did not willingly bring Lazarus there.

Personally, I find this much more interesting than the question of who Lazarus is. (However that ends up being resolved, it’s looking more and more like there’s going to be a disappointed backlash.) The dragon research is a possibility, as is the map that seems to show where Primordus is… but it’s more interesting to me to think that he’s after Omadd’s machine, just recently delivered to Taimi. It would explain the timing, and he might be able to do much, much more interesting things with it than with research on Primordus.

Another thought- two episodes left, and we still don’t have a clear region or plot thread for the next expansion. It’s possible there’ll be an abrupt turn yet, or that this resumed interest in the destroyers means that it’ll be Primordus and the Ring of Fire after all, but I’m a little excited by the possibility of one that’s scattered across the map. It seems like that sort of plot would have a harder time forgetting that the rest of the world exists the way HoT did. It’s also an interesting contrast to S2, which telegraphed where we were going and why from the first episode onward, long before we knew there’d even be an expansion.

Your second thought is a fair point, although still based on an assumption. The problem with your first one is that in lands squarely in the tangle that’s been made of the early timeline.

Back in GW1, it was stated that humans arrived in Cantha before Tyria and Elona, and implied that they might have reached Cantha from lands further south and/or west. That’s what Wooden Potatoes was referencing. Come GW2, however, we have new lore stating that the ‘landing point’ was Arah. There are a couple decent theories out there reconciling those two bits of apparently contradictory text, but unless you hold that the newer lore is wrong, the original portal humans came through was much, much closer to the Crystal Desert than it was to Nahpui Quarter.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As for the “unreliable narrator therefore wrong” bit… until there’s sufficient reason to believe he’s unreliable rather than “well, maybe…” then there’s no reason to argue such

I think drax’s argument is that all the bells and whistles attached to the Crystal Desert Ascension makes for a reason. I don’t have a horse in this race, but I can see what he’s getting at- intuitively, it feels like going to heaps of effort to get a gift from the gods that’s only been bestowed once in recorded history should put that gift on a whole different scale to a gift that requires much less (although still substantial) effort, is granted by mortals-turned-heavenly-cautionary-tales instead of gods, and is seemingly granted at least several times per generation, but that requires a few assumptions. It might be that gods and celestials both can provide the same gift, and that Cantha just lucked out by having access to the entities with much lower standards, but that also requires assuming a degree of parity between the gods and celestials, the Trials of Ascension and the test in Nahpui Quarter, and the gift that Turai Ossa failed to attain and the one that every Canthan emperor since 1 A.E. has been granted. At that point you have two equally valid interpretations of a major metaphysical topic, and it doesn’t seem like an character who doesn’t seem to have much information on the subject should be the sole determiner between them.

Or, to be more concise- reason to believe that the narrator doesn’t have sufficient information to be reliable, coupled with the narrator espousing an unintuitive conclusion, could conceivably constitute sufficient reason.