Guild Wars 2

I feel that the most likely would be a variant on the Captain’s Council idea-the Council and surviving citizens rebuild the city, likely with some material help from allies like Kryta or the Zephyrites, but due to their bungled managing of the situation immediately before the attack and in this aftermath phase, the citizenry will turn on the Council, changing up the ranks quite a bit and possibly curtailing the power of the Council as a whole. I also expect it’ll just be something going on in the background, rather than being a part of the main story or having any particular patch dedicated to it, with the exception of the first release of Season 2.

Accepting or not, LA has a bad track record of attracting negative attention. Just in the GW2 timeline, so the last 2 years, it’s been attacked three times, and the last one razed it to the ground, while all the other major cities have only experienced one attack (well, two, in DR’s case) in the same time frame, none of which did any lasting damage. Short of an area under the control of an active Elder Dragon, LA seems the worst place for the Zephyrites to put down roots.

pdavis.8031:

It would make sense for the Zephyites to assist in rebuilding LA as per their treaty, but also as a way to form a more permenent trade agreement, as well as an outpost to conduct business from. Plus it would serve as competition for the BLTC. There are many factions who would stand to gain much by assisting in the rebuilding of LA.

As far as their usefulness in the project. I think they could be VERY valuable. They have access to many resources, and the speed of transportation. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them as a major part in the next LS and the rebuilding of LA.

Again, where would they have resources from? Wood and rock both require land, and the Zephyrites stick to the sky. Creating a permanent would also be against their interests- the entire reason they have a flying sanctum is so that they can stay away from conflicts on the ground, so creating a permanent tie to a place that draws trouble like a corpse draws flies would be ridiculous.

@MRA True, they could pick them up easily, but I don’t think that’d really be necessary. The Captain’s Council would have to pay for it all anyway, and Lion’s Arch’s mine and lumber camp in Lornar’s are still functional. The only room I see for the Zephyrites is to play middleman if those places don’t turn out resources fast enough… and even then, I’d expect the Council to turn first to Kryta, and maybe even the charr legions, as they’d be able to move the material quicker and cheaper thanks to the asura gates.

Wasn’t it just a trade agreement?

I’d say there’s a pretty good chance they’ll show up. ANet has to do something with the zone, seeing as right now it’s just a big hole in the map, and with the Captain’s Council not letting citizens in, holidays are out. I see why they wouldn’t want to rebuild it, at least not so soon, but that means that some kind of temporary content has to start cycling through LA before it goes the way of Southsun and we forget the place exists. The Zephyr Sanctum would certainly be an easy solution, though I don’t believe the Zephyrites would be much help in rebuilding. A nomadic existence in the skies doesn’t exactly lend itself to a surplus of resources, especially bulky building materials.

Avariz.8241:

Isn’t Orr an extension of the continent of Elona? In GW 1 Orr is a land mass of the Crystal Desert. However when the six human gods and orrian kings lived on Orr the Crystal Desert was the Crystal Sea, but it was still possible even then Orr could still be a land extension of Elona. For instance currently in GW 2 Orr is a land extension of Elona and in addition there is the Crystal Sea as well. If that is the case then as it is currently in GW 2 the explanation would be Orr is the original origin of human on planet Tyria; and as Orr is a land extension of the continent of Elona, this would make the continent of Elona the original origin of human as well.

Yes and no. Depending on how large the Crystal Sea actually was, Orr might have been an island; if not, it would have been only the tip of a very long, mountainous, seemingly uninhabited peninsula that has since become the mountains making up the western border of the Desolation. Either way, I’d hesitate to call it part of Elona- they might be part of one landmass, but then, Kryta and Ascalon are also part of that landmass. Somewhat similarly to Europe and Asia in our world, the border between Elona and Tyria seems to be at least as much a cultural one as a geographical one, and culturally Orr is definitely not Elonian.

Stated lore is that the Ascalonians migrated from what later became Orr, and that they arrived in what is now Ascalon from the south and pushed the charr north. I don’t think the facts leave room for a group of humans coming from the east, especially given that east of Ascalon is semi-stated to have belonged to the charr back then.

I’m curious, though- what makes you think that they’re different? Maybe you’ve seen something I missed. I always thought the Ascalonians looked almost identical to the lighter end of the Krytan spectrum, and their culture also seems very similar- noble class, feudal government, royal line descended from Doric, same way of looking at the gods. It’s difficult to say for sure, as in GW1 we see Kryta under a very radical departure from their traditional society, and in GW2 it’s after hundreds of years of incorporating refugees from many diverse places, but accounting for those the only differences I’ve picked up on are dress, architecture, and treatment of the dead- and two of those might simply come down to differences in the climates of the regions.

Well, the Krytans are supposedly Elonians or Elonians hybridized with Tyrians, and we can’t say anything about Orr because all that’s intact for the player to see is the architecture… which is implied to be largely done by the gods. But. I don’t usually like picking apart WoodenPotatoes’ videos because that misses the entire point of the kitten thing, but… here goes.

(listening to this in another window, so if he corrects himself in the annotations, I’ll miss it)

Bit about Kryta being an Elonian colony: That’s what the lore clearly states. Dig a little deeper and you get a confused mess. I’ll skip the spiel on ways that they might be reconciled, but what we have as stated fact in the lore is that Kryta was conquered and named in the early days of Tyrian humanity by an Orrian royal named Mazdak, and that Kryta was “established as a colony of Elona” in 300 A.E.

The statement that humanity was on Elona longer than Tyria is false. Humans arrived on the mainlands of both continents in the same year, 205 BE, although the Elonians did manage to become an organized kingdom a hundred years before the Tyrians did.
The timeline goes thusly:
205 BE: humans appear on Istan, Elona, and Tyria.
200 BE: Founding of the Dynasty of the Primeval Kings, who ruled Istan and Elona
100 BE: Founding of Ascalon, which at the time encompassed all three Tyrian kingdoms.
2 AE: Orr becomes an independent kingdom.

Orr was not the first Tyrian nation to exist, but before it existed the land was still the first place in Tyria that humans called home- timeline is unclear on that point, but the humans were brought to the world at the location of Arah.

Strictly speaking, while the Kurzicks and Luxons did appear on Cantha after the Canthans, they still arrived before the Canthans united into the Dragon Empire, and were in fact full members of the Dragon Empire for a short time at its very beginning.

The gods bringing the Forgotten to Tyria is most likely false. That comes from an origin story that the devs have since decided is pretty thoroughly wrong. The exact nature of the interaction between the Forgotten and the human gods is still up in the air, although it is clear that such interaction happened.

All in all, the video is an excellent overview of the facts and most popular theories. There are a couple misstatements that I pointed out, but you can’t blame WP for that when the devs seem to keep changing their minds. I add my endorsement, however little that might be worth, as it is a great primer if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Lazarus.3970:

Tuomir.1830:

Considering that in the past, there was no choice on using technology (or rather, they used the same technology others did), it indeed is the logical thing to assume that the statement meant not using the new “modern” technology of GW2, as opposed to starting using magic.

Well, rangers can use harpoon guns. If they used tridents instead harpoon guns, then that argument would be supported by the weapons they can use, but the harpoon gun kinda hinders that.

They use harpoon guns that can grow coral and summon schools of piranhas from out of the blue. They might shoot spells like staves and tridents do, but even their tech is magical.

Some counter points:

-There’s some funny business going on in Garrenhoff; people going up to the castle never to be seen again, the barely restrained fury of the elementals. If you were conducting magical research that could go wrong, and possibly required sacrifices to boot, why would you keep it it in the near vicinity of the people you’re supposedly doing the work on behalf of? Why not move it to an unsupervised community of some of your oldest enemies?

-I don’t buy that there’s an easy answer for how the tengu know what they know. Whoever you care to blame, the fact remains that they were a savage race of tribal raiders in Tyria, and only a little better on Cantha. The proposition that they had peaceful contact with the elder races therefore has no evidence for it and circumstantial evidence against it. The legend idea would hold that they were around during the last rise- again, no evidence for it, and that they would go ten thousand years, advance so little, and then reach the place we see them now in just a couple hundred is at least as far-fetched as the idea they found some knowledge in a human wizard’s dwelling. They couldn’t have easily gotten the knowledge from any source, and while the Wizard’s Tower is not where I would look first, it’s no harder to believe than the alternatives.

-I highly doubt Isgarren, rather he proves to be human, tengu, or mergoyle, is “supporting” Garrenhoff. There’s just too many ominous hints that there’s some dread secret floating out there.

-This, I agree fully upon. Such are the dangers of quoting the wiki.

On a personal note, yes, Oneman is unfortunately going to need a thicker skin if they intend to stick around here, and yes, they’ll be beset by people nitpicking so long as they don’t take care with their wording, but they’re new, and enthusiastic, and in my eyes that forgives quite a lot. Ease up on the guy, let them get their feet under them before you aim to knock them down.

And whatever else might be said, I stand by my opinion that the theory is well wrought.

I… huh. Y’know, now that you mention it, maybe they are related. Same habitat, comparatively same appearance (to you hypothetical naysayers, I cite the jungle troll), and the shift in coloration might be a result of hybridization with the polar bears which seem to have come south with the norn, a possibility which would also account for their recovery from what may have been near-extinction.

I’m not entirely sure why, but I find this possibility honestly exciting. Good catch.

I was referring to the “before there were even worlds or the stars that light the night sky, there was but one thing in the universe—the Mists. The Mists touch all things. They are what binds the universe together, past present, and future. They are the source of all good and evil, of all matter and knowledge” bit, actually, which was presented as an objective statement by the developers rather than the subjective beliefs of Tyrians. That doesn’t leave too much room for interpretation.

EDIT: I do grant, though, that certain other aspects of that passage, especially as pertains to the afterlife, have been retconned. It is conceivable that the devs would change their mind on this too.

It’s a weak association, but Grenth does have a relation to destruction via his sphere of mortality. He doesn’t take an active hand the way Balthazar does, but he does have the ‘all things inevitably come to an end’ angle covered. Destruction isn’t the word I would use, but it is not entirely unfitting.

We know the gods are alive, because they do on occasion still answer prayers.

You are right as well, of course, but I see no more point in assuming the worst of them than you do in giving them the benefit of the doubt. We just don’t know. What we do know is that what Melandru is said to have done while she was still around is well beyond what the Pale Tree is capable of doing. As the power of a god is eternal, and indestructible, she is still capable of such power and will be so long as she lives; ergo, Melandru is more powerful than the Pale Tree.

I don’t think Oneman is saying that they are sure they are right- it sounds like they’re just trying to generate a discussion on the topic. It’s easy for us to shoot that down, having gone over the Wizard’s Tower ceaselessly since Prophecies, but to the fresh blood it’s still, well, fresh.

As to your questions, Oneman, we don’t have a clear answer, as you surely discovered in your research, but consider that the Tower is quite clearly built along the lines of human architecture, suggesting a human built it. If that is the case, and if there are texts within the Tower that reference the previous dragon rise, I’d expect the knowledge to have originated either from the dwarves or the gods- both theories have minor issues, but nothing insurmountable. The dwarves have the benefit of having had historical interaction with both the humans and the Avicara tengu, but by the little we’ve heard of it, their knowledge of the dragons seems to have degraded into much less specific religious myth, although any observant man (or bird) could have pieced together the original meanings based on what’s happening now. The gods are a more tricky proposition- we know they at one point went to considerable lengths to study the last dragon rise, but we don’t know how much they knew, and in any event all indications are that they never shared their knowledge with their worshipers. Still, it is possible that such things were recorded and were later labeled religious texts, and further possible that a powerful wizard could have found them and brought them home during the 1,000 year absence of the gods.

Interesting, to be sure. As fan-gen, I enjoyed it; as a theory, it suffers from the fundamental hole that, according to the knowledge we are given, there is no such thing as beyond the Mists.

Valento.9852:

If Melandru has built Tyria, can he control leylines and all its power? What’s the connection between the land and the magic that lies within? Are they somewhat intertwined?

Melandru didn’t build Tyria. The world, the Elder Dragons, and magic existed long before she and the other gods entered into the picture. The actual connection between the world and magic is unclear, although I’m inclined to say that they are intertwined.

Pirlipat.2479:

A goddess who is not interfering with the world anymore is not powerfull at all anymore.

Power exists irregardless of rather it is currently in use. Lack of action in no way diminishes what she is capable of, and that assumes she is in fact sitting about idly- for all we know of their situation, the gods could just as easily be fighting a cosmic war on a scale that makes our current squabble with the Elder Dragons look entirely insignificant.

onemantankwall.3641:

. “They apparently have some ancient, lost knowledge of the Elder Dragons (an awareness of the cyclic nature of their awakening, for example), but it is not known how they acquired it.” Elementals could easy be dragon magic from the lost ancients

That, I doubt. There’s no particular reason dragon magic would be involved in what is essentially the same as what any elementalist can do, just on a larger scale.

I’m going to be honest, the grammar very nearly prompted to to quit the page without further consideration… but the theory itself is surprisingly airtight, considering how off the wall it is. speaking without any personal knowledge of the developer comment you posted, I’d say that the only possible hole I see is that tengu are not particularly known for producing mages, and whoever’s sitting in the Tower now is clearly a mage of great power; but since ANet’s recent lore developments have pushed the idea that everyone has it in them to master magic, that could easily be worked around, and your theory has the added bonus of answering some unanswered questions instead of providing more.

I’m not sure I’m convinced, but all in all it’s much better than the theories I’ve usually seen regarding the Wizard’s Tower, or the tengu, for that matter.

Yeah, reading through that, it sounds like they just forgot a with or for.

cipherus.7052:

Great responses everyone!
So if magic can be accessed by everyone for the most part, does that mean that the lesser races of Tyria such as Quaggans and Skritt could become magic using professions if they wished?

Theoretically yes. In practice, it doesn’t seem likely to ever become popular. Magic takes discipline and practice- it’s been compared to earning a college degree- and neither quaggans nor skritt are much given to that kind of thing.

That said, there is a quaggan pastkeeper in the personal story that uses a kind of magic.

Falcon.8713:

We’ve known the name of mordemorth scince the release of GW2 and the Crucible Of Eternity dungeon, if you look at your combat log @ Subject alpha, he got 3 attacks:
-Teeth of Mordremoth
-Teeth of Primordus
-Teeth of Jormag

But that’s meta-knowledge that our character could not possibly know. The question here is how the citizens of Tyria know the names of the dragons.

Never played that path myself, but I’ve heard that it’s a bugged animation that’s supposed to be a new star forming.

Yeah, just listened through it again, and on the second go it sounded like his hesitation was about rather it was lore for one norn to be able to transform into multiple forms. The grown over time bit he seemed fairly confident about, so I fully concede the point.

It does when Jeff specifically notes at that point that it’s something that their still talking about the lore aspects of, and makes it clear that all he can do is speculate from the mechanics. Still makes it a more likely answer, but not one set in stone like most Word of Dev.

That’s the context for what he says about “grown over time” as well- additional forms. The transcription is a general paraphrasing, not a word for word retelling, so it does twist things a bit. If you want to hear the original, hit the link at the top of that page and skip to the 11 minute mark.

Ooh, podcast I haven’t heard before. Very well, I cede the point, though I will point out that he goes on to immediately say “This is in the game mechanics so I’m walking on thin ice at the moment.” and “This is from the play standpoint as opposed to lore, we are still in discussions about this.”

CHIPS.6018:

Has it been stated that Zhaitan have total control over the whole Mist and Underworld? The fact that we can still enter the Mist in GW2 states otherwise.

I believe Zhaitan captures spirits and ghosts from Kryta itself. Spirits and ghosts do exist in the “living” world. But this is of course speculation.

The personal story step with the reaper does say that Zhaitan managed to steal the soul of one of Grenth’s own priests from the Underworld. Assuming Grenth is unlikely to give his own priesthood less protection in death than the rank-and-file dead, that seems to indicate Zhaitan can get to just about any soul in the Underworld.

That does beg the question, though, of rather Zhaitan went to the trouble of deliberately pulling a soul from the afterlife, or if that kind of thing just happens as a side effect of corruption- if the later, it is likely that the vast majority of risen, mooks or not, have souls, and oddly enough remaining in Tyria as a ghost might be the only way to keep out of his reach. If the former, we must then ask also why Zhaitan didn’t do this for all of his minions- assuming as the lot of you do, that the soul is correlated with powerful minions, the cost must have been high enough to make it untenable on a mass scale, which would pose its own questions and implications regarding the interplay between the Elder Dragons, the Gods, and the Mists.

So… are we saying “soul” and “mind” are synonymous here? If so, where’s the evidence?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Nothing says all Awakened have souls, actually. Only those whom speak and lead seem to. The officers and craftsmen. The grunts hold no indication of souls, though I may be wrong.

If we are indeed assuming that a soul is required to retain a mind, personality, and memories, then Hareh makes a compelling case for even the lowliest Awakened retaining their souls.

I would call magic a form of power, and the norn transformations are a single application for someone else’s power. As far as we can tell, it’s a bestowed gift, not an inherent property. I suppose it would be magic, and my previous wording was not the best; but it is not the norn’s own magic, and not something that’s of use in any other way.

The point I was trying to make is that being born norn doesn’t give you any sort of leg up in being an elementalist or necromancer, or any other spellcasting.

Wanderer.3248:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Little bit of each. Everyone’s born with a different amount of innate ability, but anyone can learn to cast spells. How powerful they are is a combination of talent and training.

Source: http://esprits-dorr.fr/node/261

And race. All Norn heros can shapeshift for example.

That’s not really magic though. They only do it through their bond to/blessing of the spirits of the wild. It’s not something innate to the norn race by themselves.

Kalavier.1097:

We know only higher ranking ones have sentience, and thus probably souls. The rest? It’s not really stated.

Eh… yes and no. They certainly don’t demonstrate advanced tactics (I believe in the PS it was stated that left alone, they’d just alternate between lurking and swarming), but in SoS we saw that even the lowliest deckhands on one of Zhaitan’s ships displayed detailed memory of their past lives and recognition of those they knew when they were alive. I’d tentatively argue from this evidence that all risen are “sentient”, but feel no desire to converse unless they knew the person in a past life- and then only to such an extent as serves Zhaitan’s ends.

I’d say it is the same as the centaur art, just less colorful. The concepts seem to pretty much be what we have on the standard norn icebrood models- fully icy limbs and head, chest only sealed beneath a thin layer.

You might be right about the other Sons models, though- I’m not going to stick my neck out for this until I can get in-game to check myself.

Picture courtesy of Bear Cavalry. All the models I looked at had the same, though it was harder to see on the ones that actually wore shirts.

Like I said, it’d have to be set chronologically after this first campaign. I agree with you about the appearance issue though.

As for the Sons- the exposed skin on the chest of their models (possibly their faces as well, haven’t bothered to check) is covered in rime, which sounds identical to the first phase of corruption as it was described in Edge of Destiny. Corruption would also be necessary to work alongside the icebrood wolves and elementals as they do- also looking to Edge of Destiny, the icebrood have a friend-or-foe sense based on the presence of Jormag’s power. It may even account for why there’s practically no change between the mentality of the rank-and-file Sons and the ones outright called icebrood, when every other case of corruption, and even possible corruption (the Nightmare), is observed to result in major changes in personality.

Stooperdale.3560:

The forgotten ritual might explain it, but then a character who was only possible after the ritual was discovered would be able to go into a dungeon path and discover it.

Chronologically, such a character would have to be set after the first campaign, and their story would center around their class, not their race, which isn’t how ANet did things this time around. But the backtracking? That wouldn’t be an issue- no different than a Nightfall character playing through Prophecies.

Wanderer.3248:

The corrupted are almost all slaves to the dragon. There doesn’t seem to be much, if any (possibly very rare) precedent for minions turning against the dragons. Having thousands of rebellious minions running around would be implausible.

Not really. The forgotten ritual would be a plausible explanation, as would that they’re simply in very early stages of being overcome (like the Sons of Svanir)

CHIPS.6018:

Undead (also Risen & Shiro’ken) – When a soul/spirit is forced back into a body, it becomes a type of undead. The body might not be the original body of the victim (as seen in Shiro’ken). These undeads are capable of thoughts and feelings. But they rarely have full control of their actions. That means an undead father might end up killing his own daughter and son, because he cannot control himself.

Mostly true, but alas, we have conflicting evidence on the spirit bit. In the vast majority of cases, rather the spirit is bound to the body or not is unaddressed. There are a couple times when a slain undead will with their last words thank you for freeing them, but there is also at least one case where a ghost is complaining about how her body is now an undead. There just isn’t convincing evidence either way.

Most liches does have a master. So the way I see it, liches are just the more powerful version of the undead. The “grand master” put liches in charge of their undead army.

Not true. Most of the liches we know of act independently. Khilbron, Joko, Zoldark, all of them worked by themselves to their own ends. The only so-called liches seen to serve a master are the two risen liches in GW2- and as they are risen, and as said master is an Elder Dragon, there’s a strong case to be made that their circumstances should be considered separately. Mazdak is even more bizarre, and so is even harded to pin down.

As for my thoughts on your origin theory, there’s sadly an almost complete lack of evidence. Assuming Khilbron was not a lich during his tenure as Vizier (an assumption for which there is no evidence, I might add), he was changed in the Cataclysm, which is itself fully mysterious magic. None of the others even have that much- there is no mention of Joko or Zoldak’s lives before turning, and Mazdak and the risen liches may or may not have been liches before Zhaitan corrupted them. The assertion that self-willed liches turned themselves undead is as good a hypothesis as any other, but one we lack the means to test or prove.

EDIT: It occurs to me that you may have been referring to Abaddon when talking about masters. There’s no sign that he played a role in Khilbron’s actions between the Cataclysm and Khilbron’s destruction. If anything, the dialogue with the agent Abaddon had assigned to manipulate Khilbron suggests that they had discarded and forgotten him after the destruction of Arah. Khilbron’s belief that he required the Scepter of Orr is further evidence- if he was obeying Abaddon, he would not have needed some relic to make Abaddon’s servants work towards his ends.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Technically, there’s little evidence of rangers in gw1 using magic. The closest thing was the nature rituals but that is never explained for what it is.

Fair enough, and they certainly didn’t use those as a crutch even to the extent of the assassin or dervish. Arguably, summoning a spirit to control the winds might be considered magic regardless of the mechanism, but I cede that the ranger may well not have been tapping into any power of their own.

Seeing as we killed him without destroying any such object, it clearly didn’t function like your cliche lich’s device. My bet? If there is any canon to it, it is in fact a real life phylactery, just a token of some religious significance, unrelated to his lichdom. That fits our current information much better, Orr being a highly religious nation- that sort of nation often requires their officials to at least appear the most pious of all.

Of course, it could just as easily be an alternative sort of phylactery like the Elder Scrolls have, or even a regular lich phylactery that was negated by the bloodstone… or just an object made by a designer who doesn’t obsess as much as we over the nature of the undead.

Kalavier.1097:

IIRC, in the first game it was labeled more as you were born with it, and training enhanced it (Warriors, rangers, and paragons were the classes without any magic as I recall).

Rangers had a deal of magic nature rituals, and even paragons arguably, what with their floating in the air and spectral wings. But in Guild Wars 1 the current question wasn’t really addressed, beyond acknowledging the existence of institutions that taught magic. ANet left themselves room to choose any answer they cared to, and it seems they’ve done just that.

Little bit of each. Everyone’s born with a different amount of innate ability, but anyone can learn to cast spells. How powerful they are is a combination of talent and training.

Source: http://esprits-dorr.fr/node/261

Considering that our last “investigation” was us being spoonfed information so that we could pat ourselves on the back, I’m really hoping those loose ends will be integrated into some other format this time around. It doesn’t need to be part of the main plot, but I’m worried that if it isn’t it’ll once again just be us standing in a room being told things we would not reasonably know.

The Nameless Lich seems to have been a dropped plotline- iirc, one of the devs said she’d be playing a role in the future, but that was before they stopped making new content for GW1.

EDIT: “It’s safe to say you’ll be seeing [the Lunatic Court] again – as well as that lich.” http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/11/costume-design-and-hints-of-whats-to-come-massivelys-intervie/

That was just after Halloween 2010, and while the Lunatic Court stuff was followed up on in ’11 and ’12, the lich played no further role before the end of GW1 updates was announced in May 2013.

Still haven’t, really. The closest we have is the inference that Khilbron was transformed as a side-effect of the Cataclysm… and even then, that’s just an inference, and he could have been changed by some as-of-yet unknown factor. For Joko and the so-called Risen Liches we don’t even have that much.

We didn’t learn it, but a lot of the fan speculation was that it involved either Malyck’s tree or something to do with the Nightmare- if we were on the right track, it could easily be revisited when we go after Mordremoth.

jheryn.8390:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

To elaborate a bit on 1, we saw seven in 1079, and killed them all. The last time a mursaat was seen and left the encounter alive was a year before, in 1078- to our knowledge, at that time and this, that one is the only survivor of the race.

Well, he is the only know survivor of the ones we encountered in Tyria. There could be more living in other places.

Thus, “to our knowledge”. While it can certainly be fun for theory-crafting, I try to keep more-or-less baseless speculation out of the answer when someone asks only for information.

I had a line of thought similar to yours when I first saw him, but a pretty large problem comes up very quick- perhaps a Preceptor of the Order of Whispers can get away with being from a place no one’s heard of, but a noble who A.) openly proclaims himself a lord of the place and B.) claims a correspondence with the queen, and is in the Vigil to boot? That raises way too many questions.

And besides, iirc when talking to him as a human your character asks him about Kryta by saying “What news from home?”, suggesting that if he is from somewhere else originally he at least considers Kryta his home now, and so his lordship is likely a Krytan one.

I’m definitely with you on wanting to know more about the founding of the Vigil, though- there has to be a story there, and Jorasdottir in particular intrigues me, who claims to be in regular communication with the spirits.

Kalavier.1097:

I’m of the thought Adelbern was behind Evennia disappearing.

Yeah. He tried to do it once before, and this time Rurik wasn’t around to restrain him.

Tamias.7059:

Kalavier.1097:

An option also is that he simply was crazy and wanted the Vanguard out of the picture since it was obvious some people started questioning his rule of the remains of the nation.

And since the Vanguard was so popular…

The Vanguard were already out of the picture – in the Far Shiverpeaks, they were further away than they were in Ebonhawke, and what’s more were actually disrupting the charr offensive from behind enemy lines. It doesn’t make political or tactical sense to recall them to Ascalon and put as much distance between the charr and them as possible.

By the paranoia theory, his decision was to distance them from the Krytans, who they were too close to- close enough to treasonously divert Ascalonian soldiers from where their place was to some insignificant Krytan squabble. Krytans killing Krytans? No true Ascalonian would want to stop that!