Guild Wars 2

Amaimon.7823:

If the indian guy at a company made a cellphone, is the indian guy the creator or the company?

Last I checked, Abaddon was neither an employer nor a legal entity. Besides, the Fury was a servant of Dhuum. How much relevence that actually has is an open question, but that’s the point- we just don’t know with a lot of this stuff.

*It’s confirmed that the agent’s of abaddon did it, Razakel, The Liar

That’s fair. Hinted was the wrong word- Razakel came out and said that that he used Khilbron to ‘wipe Orr from this world.’ The problem is that we don’t know what that means. Did he hand Khilbron the Scrolls and say “Hey, our god will be happy if you use these to destroy your country”? Did he lie to Khilbron about the Scrolls, and let the fool pursue them and retrieve them himself in the hopes of saving his country? Or did he simply convert Khilbron to Abaddon’s worship and then stand in the shadows as a man who revered magic and remorseless logic acted as he inevitably would in the face of mass destruction?

We certainly know that Abaddon was involved, but it’s not necessarily accurate to say that he gave Khilbron the Scrolls. A minor nitpick, sure, but it’s doing a disservice to a very important and ambiguous character in GW lore.

@Brokensunday, maybe, maybe not. There’s speculation on the topic, but we don’t know either way.

@Amaimon… there’s good information in there, but much of that is unsubstantiated at best, and outright misinformation at worst.

Amaimon.7823:

No, the titans are a far more primal concept and threat to the world than even the dragons are.

There’s no evidence of that. The farthest back we have indication of titans existing is contemporaneous with the Seers, while the Elder Dragons are known have have gone back at least a cycle or two (given our current knowledge, ~20,000 years) further. In GW1 our party of eight slew dozens of titans, while in GW2 the combined forces of the continent have managed to kill two Elder Dragons.

some will call them titans of the very fabric of this world.

I’ve never seen an NPC call a titan that.

who are past redemption or restoration [snip] become a spectre that cannot survive on it’s own [snip] and then goes on it’s agonizing rampage. Propably because they have “fallen” they feel the inate need to reduce the entire world to a fallen state, it’s unknown how much intelligence these creatures still possess.

Other parts of this section are good, but all of this is unsubstantiated. Additionally, we know that titans are intelligent- there are several points where they’re known to talk, this being perhaps the most direct.

The titans souls are formed in the underworld and can under normal circumstances not get out. Some many aeons later Abaddon fell into Madness and corrupted the underworld which at the time was a stable and “fair” realm. The twisting of abaddon’s Madness turnt the realm into a Foundry of Failed Creations where the gods and the forgotten aimed to keep everything sealed, but they couldn’t control what was going on inside anymore. What was once a prison has now become a realm full of free demons and twisted spirits. (the wardens just left and locked the door).

A.) Abaddon’s Realm of Torment was not, and never had been, the Underworld. That was an apparently connected but distinct realm under Grenth.
B.) The Foundry of Failed Creations was one part of the Realm of Torment, not the whole thing.
C.) The Foundry as we saw it was created by the Fury, not Abaddon.
D.) The wardens did not leave. They were overwhelmed, driven out, or taken prisoner.

which they used for the cataclysm.

The Searing. The Cataclysm was a separate event in Orr.

we know it’s made by the titans.

No, we don’t. The titans gave it to the charr Shamans, but we don’t know if they made it, were given it themselves by Abaddon, or unearthed it somewhere else. The dev comments regarding the Cauldron can be interpreted to mean that it’s linked to the Elder Dragons, most likely Kralkatorrik, although that too is speculation.

Then Abaddon gave Khilbron the scrolls which were then used to sink Orr.

Khilbron found the scrolls in Orr. It’s hinted that Abaddon’s agents were involved, but it’s also possible that Khilbron pursued them of his own initiative.

The Titans are twisted elementals

Not in the usual sense- they have no known relation to the earth/ice/etc. elementals in the games.

who once lived in the underworld, and later fell to the madness of Abaddon.

As far as we know, Abaddon’s titans don’t predate him, and weren’t corrupted, but were created explicitly to serve him.

Which is an important thing you missed- the titans were created. With the possible exception of Gorseval, there’s no indication of a titan arising naturally.

Amaimon.7823:

DarcShriek.5829:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I wouldn’t necessarily mark the Exalted as tied to divine magic (though that is a strong probability). Still, however, magic is magic in the end and there’s nothing that says a mortal – let alone a mursaat – cannot safely absorb huge quantities of magic.

Especially when we have devices specifically designed to allow mortals to safely absorb and handle huge quantities of magic (again: Shadowstone). And we even have mention of a specific ritual, meaning that it wasn’t just a case of “I’m going to expose myself to a ton of magic and hope for the best”.

If magic is basically magic, then please explain why the dragon’s cannot corrupt the exalted? The magic that was used was expressly chosen because of it’s immunity.

or their bodies (and maybe the entire city) was made with the bloodstones in mind, since the EDs cant tap into that magic either. (wasn’t it glint who taught the elder races how to make bloodstones, I might be wrong there)

That’s always been attributed to something the Seers figured out on their own.

That said, the Forgotten explicitely set up Tarir and the Exalted because they didn’t have “the divine resources needed to imbue a new Bloodstone”.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Dwayna’s feathers have never been depicted as white, as far as I remember.

They’re white here, and on the GW1 costume, gray with a hint of blue here, gold on the Avatar of Dwayna and the default dye of the GW2 outfit, and either gold or blue in the various GW2 weapons. It’s not like they’ve only been depicted in a single color.

As for Kormir’s ties to wings: On top of her headpiece, there’s her shoulderpiece, and the fact that paragons in general (and this does include Kormir’s skillset) created ethereal golden wings with certain skills.

And I do not recall any statement of paragon wings being a reference to Dwayna.

Not seeing the wings on her pauldrons… but that’s beside the point. Looking back at the source material, I did make a leap on the paragon thing, but it was a small one. The only explanation put forth that would relate to the wings is that paragons associate themselves with guardian angels. Angels, from a human standpoint, are to Dwayna what the Reapers are to Grenth, or the various nature spirits we see linked to Melandru- her servants and representatives.

I don’t think it’s impossible that I’m off base here, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any other source for the wing motif- especially with the effects that come out of their back.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I recall Logan then shouting “that’s Kryta!” to that depiction with the horses, but it’s been a while since I read the novel so I could easily be misremembering – either way, they do go through the gate into an area which is a grassy plain.

That was a bit later, when the gate cycled to Divinity’s Reach.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Kormir actually does have wings in her depiction, as part of her having been a paragon. Further, Kormir’s colors are white and gold (like her original sunspear outfit), while Dwayna’s colors are blue and gold. Not a hint of blue. Furthermore, Dwayna has a shield – an entire weapon set in fact, and the feathers are very different in design, even from the independent bows.

Shield and spear were also Kormir’s iconic weapons, again due to paragon origin, and the distinct lack of blue indicates “not Dwayna”.

I wouldn’t say a distinct lack of blue when the stones that draw the eye to the centerpiece of the thing are blue. It also appears to have ankh imagery at that bit on the top, which was the icon of healing and monks, both tied to Dwayna. For that matter, Kormir’s own wing motifs from her paragon roots were a reference to Dwayna. And, while you already noted that Dwayna weapons in the past have switched between feather styles, I’d also expect the ones that look the most like feathers from wings to be referring to the goddess with wings, not just the one with a patterned metal circlet.

That said, zolcor, I highly doubt the shield has any significance. BLTC skins very, very rarely link to the plot, and the times they do, they still don’t hint at plot twists in advance. For perspective, we’ve had entire outfits devoted to Dwayna, Balthazar, and Lyssa, not to mention the weapon set Konig brought up and another for Balthazar, all without the human gods coming back into the story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(well, at least Edge of Destiny – and, iirc, the horses were shown to be in Kryta at that)

Not in Kryta specifically, just “a grassy plain where wild horses ran”. Could be Kryta, could be… just about anywhere else that has grass, really.

On the bigger discussion- personally, I don’t think arguing they’re extinct gets us very far. To my knowledge, they were never indicated to be in Ascalon, and the Orrian ones are naturally dead, but we know that Kryta had them five hundred years ago, and there’s been no event in the intervening time that seems like it could’ve wiped out a species of domestic animal. I think the most lore-friendly way of reconciling things is to say that they’re just rare enough in Kryta to be restricted to the nobility, perhaps a status symbol initially imported from Orr, and that we don’t see them because we never see nobles traveling from place to place (maybe with some labor breeds available to farmers). Not entirely satisfactory… but it beats saying that the roads of Kryta are regularly traversed by horses and we just always happen on the parties who are traveling by foot.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In Hidden Arcana, we travel via the hourglass into that pocket dimension within a grain of sand.

Right you are. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the surroundings my first time through… and the combat was irksome enough that I never cared to go back.

Randulf.7614:

The desert is great…until you meet your first hydra

There is no first hydra. There’s the first five, with another three sprinting up behind you ;P

@castlemanic and Moonyeti, on Glint’s Lair- in Edge of Destiny we find out that the grain of sand thing is straight-up disinformation. Destiny’s Edge managed to end up right in the middle of it while still thinking they were in the open desert, no portals involved. They’re unclear as to what the actual magic hiding the sanctuary was, but it seemed to be a complex form of illusion.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Besides, by absorbing more magic, Gleam makes himself a bigger target, and more importantly, more magic means it’s harder for him to hide, since Elder Dragons can sense magic. So going out to absorb a bloodstone’s worth of magic would only leave Gleam more of a target than before.

I agree with your main point-although shapeshifting into something much smaller isn’t entirely out of the question, it would be ridiculous for a Gleam-Lazarus not to reveal himself when surrounded by her newborn sister and her mother’s most devoted servants- but do we know that the Elder Dragons have some ability to sense magic a la the Rata Novan maps? Off the top of my head, the only time we’ve seen them home in on magic is Mordremoth in S2 and Primordus’ recent crossing of the continent, and both of them have explanations other than magic omniscience. Primordus might have been following the surge in the ley lines back to its source, and given that Mordremoth’s tendrils seem to have extended beneath the entire continent, the Priory caravans that got attacked were fairly close. Being able to pick up the ‘scent’ at that range doesn’t mean that Jormag or Kralkatorrik would be able to detect a more potent signature from the far side of the map.

3. Glint didn’t so much have an interest in the mursaat as she foresaw their destruction, foresaw them trying to rule the world and wanted to prevent such. With their destruction, she would have no more interest in them, no doubt.

Depends on how far her foresight went. If she foresaw any survivors playing a pivotal role in events to come? I could see her passing that on to Gleam before she died.

And besides that, Livia would never – without completely destroying everything about her built up til now at least – disguise herself as mursaat or White Mantle long enough to pull off being a fake Lazarus. While cunning, she’s always shown as more direct in her dealings with the White Mantle, and would rather see them dead than use them as a resource which “Lazarus” is doing.

I’m not sold there- that “always” is drawn from the course of a single year, which was more than 250 years ago, and even then Livia had very few interactions with the Mantle. In part because she was a hero, her dealings in both EotN and WiK were almost entirely with the asura. We never got a sense of how she preferred to deal with the Mantle, certainly not a strong enough one to call it a basis of “everything about her built up til now.”

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I wouldn’t expect it to become a major lore plot until after the Elder Dragons are (mostly) dealt with though.

Agreed… unless the Consortium decides to kick things off early.

Personally, I hope not- not least because Dragon’s Watch is not the side I’d want to take.

I think what we saw last episode was a B-plot coming to its natural conclusion. ANet saw an opportunity to wrap up the White Mantle plot thread that’s been dangling since WiK, and the Krytan politics one from the PS, and they took it. Head of the Snake was about as far as it could run without being dragged out or propped up, so they let it end. Now I imagine it’s back to the A-plot of the dragons (possibly including Aurene), and figuring out how Lazarus is going to fit himself into it. If I had to guess, I’d say our fight with Braham isn’t going to come to blows, but is setting up a mini Pact fleet moment where his excursion into Jormag’s territory either goes horribly wrong or uncovers something his group can’t handle alone.

That’s fair. If the writers take it into account when creating the races, a common ancestor is a viable explanation. It’s just not the only possible explanation.

Amaimon.7823:

Ardid.7203:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Amaimon.7823:

It’s almost inconceivable for 2 species to look 99.9% identical and have zero association, even if you have to go back to the first days of the Mists..

That’s… actually almost always the case in cheap fantasy. GW2 is better than most settings, true- it’s pretty much just humans, norn, and dwarves who look like different proportions of the same species, out of a pool of about thirty- but take your standard Tolkein races of humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits/halflings, out of a pool of five. With the possible exception of humans and halflings, there weren’t any relation between those groups. It’s a vexing trope, but it’s well enough entrenched in the genre that speculating on a common biological origin is almost always a lost cause.

Yes, I know I’m calling Tolkien cheap. Yes, people have been physically violent against me for that before.

but Tolkien never denied that the dwarves, elves and man share a common ancestor at some point. GW2 tries to do that. in case of LOTR is, we simply don’t know as it’s never mentioned or discussed, so there’s a chance they are. but in gw2, it’s heavily hinted at because “humans come from a different dimension”.

Yes, he did. The Silmarillion goes into the origin of all the races except hobbits, which I believe were stated somewhere to have diverged from men at some point.

Granted, “a god did it” is a cop-out, but the point I was getting at is that fantasy has a long history of not giving two hoots about evolutionary biology. Magic and the demands of the plot between them throw too much off, so the best you can usually hope for is the setting not looking too closely at it, which is what Guild Wars does.

Amaimon.7823:

It’s almost inconceivable for 2 species to look 99.9% identical and have zero association, even if you have to go back to the first days of the Mists..

That’s… actually almost always the case in fantasy. GW2 is better than most settings, true- it’s pretty much just humans, norn, and dwarves who look like different proportions of the same species, out of a pool of about thirty- but take your standard Tolkein races of humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits/halflings, out of a pool of five. With the possible exception of humans and halflings, there weren’t any relation between those groups. It’s a vexing trope, but it’s well enough entrenched in the genre that speculating on a common biological origin is almost always a lost cause.

Apply that specifically to the Guild Wars setting, where everything was created from the Mists and one of the most frequent properties of the Mists is imperfect copying of what already exists… I don’t think a connection between norn and humans is likely, beyond possibly having one serve as the ‘template’ that was used when forming the other.

On the other hand, we do see a few cases of individuals openly admiring members of another race… although it’s all kept inside the three that look like one another (human, norn, sylvari), unless you want to interpret Macha’s attachment to Cobiah as more than platonic.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Unless Elder Dragons are bound by some metaphysical law,

Given that they’ve been linked directly to major components of the All, that seems very possible, but…

they would not hibernate without reason. If the lack of magic in the world inspires their sleep, then its consumption must be key to their survival. They are perfect recyclers but they are still mortal.

Only if you make a series of assumptions about their nature. We don’t know why they fall into quiescence- we call it hibernation, because it mimics on a much larger scale what we see biological creatures do, but we don’t know if the same reasons apply. The only expert testimony we have on the topic is Glint, who put it like this: “I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until there was nothing left to eat, and then fell, sated… But three hundred years ago, the dragons’ bellies were empty and their minds were awakening.” That’s not a description of a bear hibernating for a winter. That’s a lion settling down for a nap after it gorges itself. Taking anything Glint says at face value is problematic at best, but when our sole point of evidence is against taking hibernation too literally, I’m not inclined to get tied down to that interpretation. We also don’t know if they’re mortal, not in the way you mean it- they can be destroyed, and breaking apart their body does the trick, but that doesn’t mean it’s possible for them to starve to death in the way we usually think of the matter.

Moreover if this truly is a closed system, won’t the world eventually run out of magic?

According to the asura, Tyria has some sort of Law of Conservation of Magic, so if it truly is a closed system it follows that the world won’t run out of magic.

Even if we use Aurene to gather magic from non-living sources, eventually all of it will be trapped in the flora and fauna of tyria.

Which, as far as we’re aware, isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually what we’re aiming for. The point of using Aurene as a magical battery isn’t to contain some arbitrary amount of magic; it’s to keep ambient/ley magic at a low enough level that it isn’t harmful to Tyrian life. Having her attack that life wouldn’t just be defeating the point, it’d be wholly unnecessary.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Unlike real food, magic doesn’t hold nutrients to extract. Magic doesn’t change when it leaves the Elder Dragons during hibernation – just when they create corruption.

No extraction, no devalue.

No devalue, can be re-consumed without loss.

Now, corrupted magic might be another matter entirely, but we do not know if they “re-consume corruption”. However, given Taimi’s recent Episode 2 “reveal” about magic and the Elder Dragons’ draconic energies, I don’t think that it fundamentally changes when used to corrupt things either.

If it doesn’t contain nutrients how do they survive?

The main point of nutrients is to be converted into energy. That’s an unnecessary step when you feed on energy directly.

The secondary point is to provide the physical elements used to make up the body. We don’t have any clear evidence on that point, but we do know that magic in general, and dragon corruption in particular, seems to have an easy time changing matter from one form into another. That being the case, it’s possible that the dragons don’t need organic nutrients as we know them. They might be able to convert inorganic matter- rocks, soil, water, all things that we’ve seen the dragons corrupt- into their physical forms. They might be able to constitute physical forms directly from magical energy, something you can argue the dragons, elementalists, and necromancers have already been seen doing on a smaller scale. Or they might supplement their magic diet by snacking on their minions, and we don’t know about it because nobody’s been able to hang out and observe an Elder Dragon at their own leisure. It’s also worth keeping in mind that dragons might not be intrinsically linked to their bodies like we are- Kralkatorrik can turn into a sandstorm, after all, and Mordremoth wasn’t tied to any specific physical form. If their ‘bodies’ are really just containers for the magical energy they subsist off of, a la Exalted, then they might not need to provide specific kinds of substances for brain functions or chemical messengers or the like.

Mm… I’m not sure the comparison holds. You can’t live off your waste because it’s, well, waste. Your digestive system has already extracted the parts with nutritional value, and has no use for what’s excreted.

For that to hold true for the Elder Dragons, there would have to be parts of magic that they derive no value from. As far as we know, that’s not true- our biological systems expel what we can’t convert into energy, but the Elder Dragons sidestep that process by feeding on energy directly. It’d be more analogous to a plant expelling sunlight during the night and reabsorbing it by day. There’s absolutely no reason a plant would evolve to do so, but if it did, and if that light remained in the local system until it resumed photosynthesis, there’s no reason it couldn’t reuse it.

It’s been said they are to elementals what other races are to animals. In my book, that puts them down as separate ‘species’. Besides, as far as the ‘evolution’ of an individual elemental goes, they seem to get larger and stronger, but not smarter, whereas djinn are no larger but much smarter. Greater elementals seem to essentially be stationary storms of elemental energy.

Regardless, though: we know that djinn are sapient entities who seem to have been around during the last dragon rising, and weren’t counted amongst the five. Besides them, kodan, and tengu, other possibilities include the charr (they have legends about the G.L. and the dragons, but its unclear if it’s something their race witness, pieced together from evidence after the fact, or inherited from an older civilization), krait (a lot of people speculate the prophets who they believe will flood the world are linked to Bubbles, and the obelisks have been noted to have similar properties to bloodstones), ogres (said to be distantly related to jotun and similarly old), and at a great stretch, hylek (the first hint we got in-game that killing dragons may destabilize the world was from the metaphor of a conveniently timed hylek parable, but that admittedly may have just been coincidental).

But, on the other hand, we know those five weren’t the only ones- they were just one alliance. The kodan were around back then too, and the djinn, and there is some evidence to suggest the tengu as well.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt a connection between tengu and mursaat, but the timeline isn’t one of them.

What Glenna says is “I doubt it’s going to return to normal anytime soon.” That, to me, sounds like it’s not going to turn back on its own.

As for chronomancers on the whole, from this thread

Scott McGough.6897:

For both story and gameplay, actual time travel is a quagmire that has to be handled carefully.

I see the chronomancer as much more a case of manipulating the local perception of time rather than manipulating time itself. The Continuum Split skill text specifically mentions a rift in time and space continuum, but I’m like you in that I take that to mean “continuum” as a perceived possibility that the chronomancer is working with rather than an actual time jump. It visually appears to let the chronomancer rewind time, but functionally it’s a highly advanced, specialized mesmer clone that players directly control for a short duration while their real body is phased out—thus any damage, etc. happens to the Continuum Split clone (who disappears when the skill expires), and the PC resumes control of their real body unchanged from the moment they activated the skill (although they do retain any XP, etc. they garnered while in Continuum Split).

That said, he does phrase it all as his own personal opinion, not solid canon. ANet’s policy with the professions has always been to lay down the flavor and leave it to the players to each decide for themselves how they want to fill in the blanks of how they function.

On the first- that doesn’t actually solve the core issue (how would a baby Malyck learn language?), but it’s a moot point anyway, since we find his pod later. It comes to light at that point that the Malyck we met was two weeks old.

The trouble with the cloning argument, n the other hand, is that the Mordremoth clones seem to share memories. If it was just a template, used to get the idea of a human form, that a different matter entirely- but it puts us right back at the language problem.

Malice.8439:

I don’t think it’s farfetched to think that things such as language and understanding of the surrounding world could have been drawn from Rhonan and the humans and centaurs who co-existed, lived and died near the tree.

That was the common consensus before launch, but then we met Malyck. The challenge now is to explain how a sylvari born of a different tree, one with no indication of having a helpful community to draw from, also created a human-shaped creature and instilled it with language and basic skills.

Weindrasi.3805:

And yet, in a society where men and women are seen as unquestionably equal—in a society where sexism does not already exist in some capacity—this “solution” would never work.

Two reasons I’m skeptical of this argument- first off, the whole idea of religion, and thus, of sinfulness, was also new to the charr. Saying that their new gods disapproved of something would have been no harder than saying that the new gods approved of something… and we know that the charr were willing to swallow pervasive tyranny in other regards, so inventing sexism doesn’t seem any less likely to me. At worst, they’re equally unlikely, but brings me to the second point. We don’t know the time frame. We know that Bathea rebelled, we know that the Shamans banned females from serving in Blood, and we know that they then went on to ban them in the rest of the Legions, but we don’t know when these events occurred in relation to each other or the two hundred year span between the creation of the Shaman caste and GW1. Perhaps it all happened in the course of a few days, or perhaps it took the better part of those centuries.

I remember a source somewhere stating that Balthea’s rebellion was primarily composed of females. I don’t know if it was an interview, the wiki, or lore in-game… I would honestly like to locate it again.

Which is fair, and I’d also love to see this source if you do happen to find it, but in the meantime I have to work by what I know. By Ember’s account in GoA, females didn’t become heavily involved in the resistance until after they were kicked out of the legions.

B ) It was likely associated with Flame Legion somehow, since women were so willing to resist the Flame bid for power.

The problem with that is that it wasn’t a Flame bid to power, it was the Shaman caste. Most modern charr take pains to conflate the two, and it’s true that more shamans had previously been Flame than any other legion, but they were still drawn from all four and they agreed to set aside legion identity when they took power. Being a new entity, they couldn’t have had a history of sexism, because they didn’t have a history.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the fact that the Shamans were willing to institute such a policy meant that they didn’t have any influential females among their own number, but on its own I don’t think that makes a convincing case for entrenched sexism by the old charr society. It may reflect gender roles that originally only applied to the practice of magic, not prestige as a whole (which maps to your suspicions about Flame). It may reflect a simple divide among gender lines among the Shamans themselves, with the male side happening to achieve greater influence. It may reflect an instruction by the Titans to restructure their society in a way that would maximize war efficiency, combining the labor force that had to stay behind during the campaigns with the segment of society most valuable to reproduction. It may be that whichever person was leading the Shamans during Bathea’s time had just come out of a nasty breakup, and it was late enough in the time frame that he had the unquestioned power to pursue a childish policy over it.

Or, it might be as you say, and the ancient charr were sexist. Modern charr, in their return to their ‘glorious past’, may simply be whitewashing that fact away- they’ve certainly proven willing enough to rewrite problematic parts of their history. I just don’t think that what we know justifies confidence it that conclusion. There are too many equally possible alternatives.

Not sure there’s any difference now compared to before Sea of Sorrows – the only thing Sea of Sorrows added on this matter was a date for two large assaults and confirmation Zhaitan has had periods of “rest” (something we actually knew).

What was before arguably phrased as one surge of activity was separated into three- Port Stalwart in 1229, Lion’s Arch in 1256, and Port Noble at some point after that. (There might even have been more- Isaye’s line regarding Cobiah’s reaction to the Indomitable implies that it’d attacked LA before, and anything involving the flagship of the dead fleet probably qualifies as a surge in its own right.) That sets a precedent for periods of ‘activity’ that we otherwise wouldn’t know about, narrows the gaps between them, and in general makes it seem less like there’s a binary switch between ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ and more like there’s an ebb and flow along a continuum of activity.

That said, I would not consider Talon’s comment of “six major attacks” to be of much value because he clearly underestimated Blightghast’s assault, which is on par to the assault that Whiting led against the Krytan navy in Sea of Sorrows (the assault in Port Stalwart was smaller but still significant). Talon Mira were both treating that single Dead Ship as a standard major attack, from the sound of the dialogue, which implies that the “six major attacks” Talon had seen was likely just one or two dead ships, not a fleet of them like what attacked Stalwart, Noble, and the Krytan Navy.

Arguably nitpicking, but Talon repeatedly said that they’d faced worse even when the whole fleet showed up. I’m willing to put that down to bravado, but even Mina seems to treat a single ship as nothing of consequence, implying that the attacks in the past involved a larger group.

Just a note: rather than 1, it’s 2 dragons we have a reasonable sample size for: both Jormag and Zhaitan had steadily expanded territory through minions slowly marching outside of “old” territory boundaries, without leadership of powerful champions or armies for them.

I disqualify Jormag because we know there’s another front he’s engaged on and don’t know anything about his behavior there. We have adequate reason to believe Zhaitan sat around in Orr the entire century it was awake, but from what scraps we know about Jormag, we couldn’t say whether he’s been sitting still in the Sea of Desperation or roving around clearing everything between Frostgorge and the arctic circle. At the very least, the fact that he sent his Claws out to harass his enemies and spread his corruption- something Zhaitan didn’t do until the PS, and even then only with Blightghast and Tequatl- speaks to a more aggressive posture during his ‘pressure’ phase.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(and, it is implied, part of his four-year first active phase).

Ah, you’re right. I was misremembering that bit of the lore blog.

Also, the assaults on hyleks seem relatively more recent, and seem to be a precursor to the Blightghast active phase (much like the personal story for norn/Priory/grawl/quaggan, Honor of the Waves, and the short S2 bit is a precursor for Jormag’s activity in S3).

There’s mention in Sea of Sorrows (pg 238) of the Dead Ships wiping out hylek villages. You could argue that the attacks stopped after the Indomitable and Whiting were destroyed, but ultimately, there’s no evidence either way.

I’m not sure Zhaitan’s forces assaulting the hyleks is considerable to be an active phase in of itself, because it seems by dialogue that such is just a slow war of attrition where the risen are just slowly expanding and overwhelming the hyleks over years, rather than an actual force assaulting the hylek and taking them out in hours/days.

Which is what I elaborate on later- just because a massive assault isn’t coming our way doesn’t mean that the dragon isn’t wiping out other races.

There’s an additional conundrum with that: Seis’ studies in the Current Events. That implies that Primordus had remained in the same position until just very recently, despite all other lore saying otherwise.

Whether this means Primordus had retained the Central Transfer Chamber area as his “home base” until recently moving to the Ring of Fire permanently, or if they’re retconning the situation has been left unclear.

Or that Primordus had been moving around, and just happened to pass through the already cleared area around the CTF as part of moving to the Fire Islands from somewhere even more distant. Seis, at least, has a pretty simple explanation that can be provided- although it still veers into the territory of us making excuses for the writers.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

I wonder how a Dragon compares with a Bloodstone, in terms of magnitude?

From what we’re told? Very favorably. This fella says that there wasn’t much magic left to put in the original Stone, so it stands to reason* that a ‘tiny bit’ divided by five is significantly smaller than all the rest divided by six.

*This does become a weaker argument if you suspect, as many do, that the bloodstones now hold more magic than the original artifact did when the Seers made it, but I believe the conclusion still holds true.

Possibly, but I suspect observation bias is at play here- we can only evaluate what we see, and what we see is largely limited to what the five playable races see. If this topic had come up before Sea of Sorrows was published, we might be arguing that Zhaitan’s ‘active’ phase was limited to attacking Port Noble and Port Stalwart… and conversely, according to Watch Commander Talon, there’d been six ‘major’ attacks on Claw Island in the four years he’d been stationed there, with an implication that there’d been more even further back.

I do agree that there’re clear blitzkriegs, as you put it- the last attack on Claw Island, and the following attacks on the Order headquarters, were far beyond what anyone had been expecting- but I don’t think it’s accurate to surmise that all the rest of the time a dragon is merely consolidating or making opportunistic attacks outside of its major strategy. The way I read it, that steady pressure is the strategy, allowing the dragon to grind away its foes in a battle of attrition that gives it a clear advantage, while also stockpiling a ridiculous excess of forces around itself to become well-nigh unassailable. Almost all of the places we see risen outside Orr- that is, the territory Zhaitan had claimed- seem to have been infested through this approach. The surges, where it throws forces at a major target, seem to be the exception, not the rule, reserved for the period immediately after awakening when it needs to carve out a core territory and used periodically thereafter against targets large enough to be immune to the pressure tactic, and even then Zhaitan’s approach of only using a small fraction of its forces seems to have been meant more to keep Lion’s Arch on the defensive, and to do crippling damage in a surprise attack to the Orders, than it was to actually expand and conquer territory. Meanwhile, between surges, there’s no sign that the pressure elsewhere ever let up. (Our sample size is also problematic here- a lot of our conclusions are drawn from generalizing Zhaitan’s behavior across all the other dragons. It corresponds well enough to what little we know, but it also makes assumptions to fill in the blanks, and in some cases it doesn’t match up. We’ve been downplaying those last points as exceptions, but in such a small pool of data, those outliers hold weight.)

Regardless, though, my main point is that the observation that they’re not ‘active’ against us doesn’t mean that they’re not ‘active’ somewhere else. That seems to be the mistake Taimi and Braham are making with Primordus and Jormag, respectively, and quite frankly, allowing the dragons to be portrayed in that way by the core cast is the chief driver of their Villain Decay.

Weindrasi.3805:

For whatever reason—perhaps Flame Legion had issues with sexism even then—it was primarily females who rebelled against Flame Legion efforts to rule charr society.

As far as I’m aware, that’s not true. Or at least, there’s no source indicating it. The impression I got, from Ember’s account in Ghosts of Ascalon and from The Ecology of the Charr, is that the new Shaman caste needed a way to discredit Bathea- to make it seem like she rebelled for clearly misguided reasons, so that no one would wonder if she might have actually had a point,a and that the solution they picked was that she was “using her sexuality to tempt the males from the true path of the gods,” which was a suspicion that then spread to female charr as a whole.

To build a bit on what Konig said regarding activity- it’s also worth noting that those phases seem to be in regard to the view point of the playable races. During that century or more of “inactivity”, as Taimi would put it, Primordus was clearing out vast tracts of subterranean area and warring against the dwarves- it was only “inactive” because the races we play as didn’t see the damage. That goes for most of the dragons here. Jormag’s “inactive” phase after it drove the norn south included the part where it all but destroyed kodan civilization, leaving a scant handful of sanctuaries intact enough to limp south. That decade after Zhaitan woke, while not a trouble to the big Krytan ports, saw hylek villages wiped out, a process that by GW2 may have killed as much as 94% of the population of what had once been their most populous region.

The vexing part is that while we players know this, our exposition dump plot device doesn’t. Taimi announced two of the most basic facts about Primordus- it’s awake, and it moves- like it was some great revelation. Knowing where it moved to was a big deal, yes- that gives us a target we can work with, or would if we had more than three characters working with us now. The rest, though… so the confusion is this: did they write Taimi that way deliberately, to show that she’s still very new to this study of Elder Dragons? If so, did they consider what compromising her authority on the subject might do when her conclusions are what have been driving the anti-dragon effort of this season’s plot? If this was all conscious, and a way to set Taimi up for a massive mistake, as some have speculated, then that’s well and good, but why would our character who knows better not call her on it? And that also means they’re tripping over their own format again. Leaving your players uneasy about whether they’re seeing deliberate foreshadowing or bungled writing over one of the core characteristics of your Big Bad for… six months and counting, now… that’s not a climate that builds excitement, or confidence.

azureai.9764:

Blood Legion was the first to change it’s tune – it needed more soldiers, and the charr females were ready to assume the role. Iron Legion resisted until Kalla Scorchrazor beat the kitten out of the Iron Legion Imperitor, Forge Ironstrike. Ash – usually seen at the Legion closest to Flame, but generally the most pragmatic of the Legions – was the last Legion to accept female equality.

Hm. Do you have a source on that? I was under the impression that Iron and Ash both changed their minds because of that duel.

azureai.9764:

Though charr males undeniably tend to be bigger than charr females, the differential of strength or agility between males and females seems to be, in reality, minimal. There are tons of beefy charr females in service to the Legions. One even leads the Vigil.

I actually pulled that directly from Ghosts of Ascalon- and from a Vigil charr, no less. “The two warriors were well matched. As a male of our race, Ironstrike was the larger and stronger of the two, but Scorchrazor was by far the faster and more skilled.” Emphasis mine, but note that first line too. Even though she notes that there’s a physical difference between the sexes, she starts out by pointing out that it didn’t mean either had an advantage. Different strengths, but neither was clearly superior to the other.

The Flame Legion’s sexism actually stems from the real world conundrum that Guild Wars 1 didn’t feature any female charr models.

Yeah, charr lore was definitely shaped to account for that.

To be fair, though, both are more or less true. ArenaNet was writing to explain the absence of female charr in the first game, but they did a pretty good job of working out a believable reason why. Detestable, yes, but at least the Flame Legion didn’t just wake up and say “let’s invent misogyny today”… unlike another faction I could mention.

The first point is something that bothers me as well.

For the second, though, we’re told that the Seers made their stone near the end of the last cycle, once the Dragons were nearly done eating anyway. To cite the most recent word we had on the subject, they were out to “scrape together the tiny bit of energy that was left”. There’s been plenty of speculation on whether it had an effect on the Elder Dragon cycles, but that certainly doesn’t sound like enough of a difference to kill them.

Alga.6498:

Why are they no info about this elder dragon? He has been awaken way before all of the other dragons and yet he’s still MIA??

Actually, Kralk was the second-to-last one up. I know that some of Taimi’s phrasing in Rising Flames was misleading, but Jormag and Zhaitan woke up more than a hundred years ago, and Primordus has been awake for more than two hundred. Kralkatorrik’s only been up for ten years.

Alga.6498:

Where’s he?? Why are he’s not destroying Tyria like the other dragons?
Is he chilling out at Blood Legion Homelands and wait till Primordus and Jormag finishes off each other?

>_<

More likely, the Crystal Desert (the Blood Legion Homelands is where he woke up, but he flew south from there)… or maybe somewhere beyond. Remember, Tyria’s only one continent in a fairly large world. Kralkatorrik could be destroying Elona, or the charr lands east of the Blazeridge Mountains, or some other place we’ve never heard of. Just because he’s not bothering us doesn’t mean he’s not bothering anyone.

It depends a lot on what exactly went into that ‘toxic’ part. The implication was Nightmare plant shaping, which would be a stretch for non-sylvari, and more of a ranger thing; krait poison magic, which is derived pretty directly from their necromancers; and quite possibly Mordremoth’s influence, which would be flat-out unavailable.

It’s not impossible, but with that mix it’d be quite a lot to pack into a mesmer. I’d think it more likely to see that sort of thing in a necromancer specialization, with phantasms as the utilities or on the weapon (or maybe just have it alter the minion skills through its minor traits).

What Saxifrage is saying is that ‘worthy of worship’ is at least implicit in some of the possible definitions of ‘god’. Like ‘atheist’ and ‘antitheist’, it’s one of those problematic terms that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, with no unbiased authority that’s empowered to impose a single meaning.

So, to answer her question… it depends on who you ask.

From the context, I think it’s pretty clear that “he does insist that gods exist” is part of the evidence being held against the prisoner.

But, again, I think we’re getting hung up on definition here. They acknowledge that Melandru, Dwayna, etc. exist, but hold that there’s nothing special about them that makes them worthy of worshiping. Whether that means they believe in gods or not depends on which definition of the word you use.

Amaimon.7823:

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

If you’re interested in this, you might like the Pyre Fierceshot storyline in Eye of the North in GW1. It concludes with a whole company of Charr chanting, “There are no gods! There are no gods!” I was pleased to see this theme carried forward into GW2, where staunch atheism is a cornerstone of current Charr culture.

yea, but don’t forget that was a time when the charr were having a split because of the so called fiery gods. so whatever one charr said isn’t a universal truth. I think he was more focussed on the titans at that time

Maybe not universal, but this fella in GW2 at least shows us that the Legions have an official stance on it- that gods don’t exist.

We also know, from GW2, that Khilbron had some sort of grudge against the mursaat, and at least in theory he was the one controlling the titans.

There were Inquest devices that dampened magic at the very start of Season 2, although they apparently only prevented certain kinds. (Kasmeer couldn’t portal us across a gap, but the spells on our skill bar had no difficulty tearing the thing apart.) It used on of the fairly bulky asuran generator models, but at least in theory it might be possible to optimize the effect until it could be incorporated into clothing.

Personally, I find arguing about the definition of a religious group (and, by extension, identities who define themselves by their non-membership in such groups) to be a bit of a lost cause, since there’s no universally accepted authority who gets to decide who is or isn’t an atheist.

However, since Dictionary.com has the most easily accessible definition, might I suggest using it for the purposes of this discussion? Once we’re comfortable we know what the other party means when they use the terms, we can get back to the main point of what form they might take in Tyria.

Atheist: “a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.”

Antitheist: “one opposed to belief in the existence of a god”

All this does raise another question: what we see in the second half of the vision is the Zhaitan orb crashing into Tyria, and then surging forth to encompass the entire vision. We’ve taken for granted for a long while that that was a representation of Zhaitan dying. However… every timeline I’ve seen has Ceara having her vision years before Zhaitan’s death. If it’s true that we’re only reliving her vision, does that mean that the machine can discern the future? Or that the orbs crashing together means something completely different than we thought? (That’s what I’m inclined to believe, incidentally- it’s been noted that the order of the spheres ‘activating’ matches the chronological order the dragons are presumed to have awoke in, but the Mordremoth sphere activating before the Zhaitan sphere’s ‘death’ already suggests that something else is going on than just a compressed timeline.) If we’re not just reliving her vision- if bits and pieces of it are mixed in with things she never saw- then how solid can our conclusions be without a way to tell which is which?

Physically speaking- male charr are said to be larger and stronger, but female charr are quicker. There are a couple points in the novel Ghosts of Ascalon where they’re shown to be more or less evenly matched when they both play to their respective strengths… and, of course, there are plenty of roles in combat that don’t involve hitting things with a sharp object. When it comes to magic and engineering, there’s no gender gap to speak of.

To be very specific:

Ghosts of Ascalon was the first one published, 25 months before GW2 launched. It’s set in 1324 A.E., one year before GW2 starts.

Edge of Destiny was published 20 months before the game launched. It’s set in 1319-20, six-five years before the events of the game.

Sea of Sorrows was published ten months after the game launched, in the middle of Season 1 of the Living World. It’s divided into four acts strung between 1219 and 1256, 106-69 years before the game starts.

castlemanic.3198:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I certainly agree. The evolutionary argument, then, would be that those groups that normalized it were outcompeted reproductively by the groups that didn’t, leading to one practice surviving to the modern day and the other not. I’m not sure I buy that argument, but the whole basis of evolutionary theory is that there’s competition between various traits and approaches, not that an entire species seizes on one and makes the best of it forever after.

Isn’t the theory of evolution about survival of the fittest? As in those who adapt to the situation would survive whereas those who couldn’t die out? Isn’t that basically the reason why different species exist in different climes? and those advantageous traits would change naturally over time because some traits would become more beneficial than others and then those traits would be replaced by others forever after? Until of course the rise of modern man, where we have a moral belief that we should not cull those who don’t adapt as well as others and instead care for them as much as we can.

Also if incest were evolutionarily beneficial, wouldn’t we see more of it in animal species?

To be clear, my argument there is that incest isn’t evolutionarily beneficial under historical conditions, and that’s why we don’t see it in our species. (Truth be told, I have no idea what the incidence looks like in animals.) I was mainly pointing out that under Bazompora’s hypothetical, the incest taboo could still win out for genetic reasons, even without our ancestors having the modern scientific framework to be aware of them.

But yes, that’s essentially correct… with the caveat that ‘fittest’ in this case is a measure of the resilience of the genetic line under a given set of conditions. What natural selection ‘selects’ for is successful reproduction, and the survival of the resulting progeny long enough to reproduce themselves. It’s not oriented towards individual survival beyond the point of reproduction, and individual adaptations that promote survival only stick around if they’re based in genetics or if they’re learned behaviors taught to the offspring.

Incidentally, natural selection is still at work in modern humans as well- it’s just that we’ve changed our environment so drastically over the last few millennia that the pressures we’re currently ‘adapting’ to are unprecedented. We may be working to ensure that individuals vulnerable to those pressures aren’t being personally culled by them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re having their kids.

Bazompora.2635:

Besides, where incest would be normal, the higher rate of birth defects should be deemed normal too,

I certainly agree. The evolutionary argument, then, would be that those groups that normalized it were outcompeted reproductively by the groups that didn’t, leading to one practice surviving to the modern day and the other not. I’m not sure I buy that argument, but the whole basis of evolutionary theory is that there’s competition between various traits and approaches, not that an entire species seizes on one and makes the best of it forever after.

Bazompora.2635:

Cultural relativism has been thrown out before you joined the discussion. For, likewise, any reason why sylvari have romance in the first place is voided by it.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

This isn’t a binary choice between importing something wholesale or having none of it. When things manifest independently, it stands to reason that it’ll manifest similarly in some places to reflect fundamental similarities and differently in others to reflect fundamental differences. The sylvari, with the fundamental difference of infertility and the fundamental similarity of a psychology mirroring humans, would naturally manifest the social aspects of romance while not manifesting the sexual ones- including the taboo on incest.

When things are instead adopted, which I expect is largely what happened with sylvari and romance, you’re closer to the mark: things will be imported wholesale except where there’s specific reason to make a change. In this case, the sylvari have specific reason to drop the incest taboo- it doesn’t make sense within their society, and if it was left in place, they’d have no eligible partners within their own kind.

I might not have applied that particular label to it in as many words, but I, for one, most certainly haven’t thrown it out.

Sartharina.3542:

Why are people trying to describe the magical plant people created in imitation of human life and existence in terms of non-Tyrian-based Real World science?

A combination of enjoying the intellectual exercise, and sincere curiosity in trying to comprehend where Bazompora is coming from. I suspect what we’re seeing is a clash of unspoken underlying assumptions, but I haven’t been able to deduce theirs to my satisfaction yet.

Bazompora.2635:

I still don’t see the advantage in prioritising pair bonds over communal bonds in social beings without individual fertility, as you did not elucidate beyond allusion.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

It’s about emotional intimacy, it’s about building tight-knit social units, it’s about companionship,

I thought that was more than allusion, but to expand- intimacy begets trust. Trust allows cooperation on goals without wasting focus and energy hedging against unreliability or betrayal, it builds support to fall back on during times of hardship or loss, it forms the core of social networks and it allows others to compensate for your relative weaknesses and vice versa, strengthening both parties.

Additionally, intimacy maximizes on the boons of companionship. Shared enthusiasm often forms a positive feedback loop, which creates more excitement, more drive to accomplish things you’re passionate about, and more good feeling to buffer against the unpleasant aspects of life. Having someone to share burdens, or otherwise vent to, can ameliorate perceptions of isolation and futility that would exacerbate the problems, reduce the stress in instances where you’d previously been the only one pursuing a solution, and often also speed up emotional processing. Having others share in your experiences normalizes and destigmatizes activities you feel ashamed of, and having them affirm your recollection lends credibility in social situations.

Naturally, none of that requires romantic relationships, but romance does act as a force multiplier applied to the benefits derived from a single person. (Or multiple selected people, in polyamorous arrangements.) As many of these benefits only require a single other person, in purely dispassionate terms it maximizes on your investment.

That may be missing the point, though. Quite simply, love also (with some exceptions) feels plain good, and that can be an end-in-itself. We can debate ’til the sun goes cold and entropy swallows the universe why it feels good, but so long as it just does, many people will need no further reason to pursue it.

Bazompora.2635:

The Pale Tree, however, is an obvious r-strategist with her extensive, neglected and fast-maturing offspring, with an elevated probability of getting themselves killed through draconic predation. Romance is useless to her and moreso to her sylvari brood, that breeds nor raises infants.

The r-strategy is a model of genetic propagation. Unless the sylvari turn out to be mobile seed dispersal mechanisms, it can’t explain the Pale Tree’s rationale, and so its other implications- in this case, precluding traits associated with the k-strategy- don’t follow. Besides, her efforts to ensure her children learn what they need to survive and to shield them from their natural predator (i.e. Mordremoth) doesn’t match r-strategy neglect anyway.

Bazompora.2635:

I’ll stop you right there, because the crux of my argument was that incest undermines the social fundaments of the family.

I’ve been neglecting this point because I’ve been focusing on other aspects, but addressing your crux- there’s no reason to believe that the sylvari think of themselves as a family, not in the kinship unit variation that comes into play with the social aspect of incest. There are, conceivably, thousands of sylvari, or perhaps more, and they’re now dispersed over a range comparable to other races. The fact that they all continue to come from the same source, consider the same being to be their (admittedly distant) mother, and have a natural empathic connection to each other all serves to strengthen their racial bonds, but it’s a little absurd to say that they consider someone they’ve never met, whose name they’ve never heard of, whose face they’ve never seen, who is functionally a stranger to them, in the same manner that you or I might consider the siblings we spent most waking hours of every day with throughout our formative years. There is evidence that the sylvari form such kinship units, but while they’re more expansive than the American nuclear family, they still stop far, far short of encompassing the entire race.

draxynnic.3719:

From memory, although it’s a while ago, Malyck used thief skills. The GW2 wiki generally doesn’t identify profession because it isn’t clearly identifiable in game mechanics like it usually was in GW1, but you can usually get a pretty good idea from the skills they use.

To be fair, though, he also specifically says that the Wardens taught him how to fight. That part didn’t come from his not-Dream.

castlemanic.3198:

one sylvari even made the design of the grove (somebody please help me with who that sylvari was, I believe he was a firstborn).

By your request.

Bazompora.2635:

But if the “incest taboo” has biological origins, then sylvari should have inherited it too, as the entirety of their emotions is purportedly of human origin. If them being infertile pod people and lacking in “animal programming” are arguments against the “incest taboo”, they also are arguments against romance altogether.

You seem to be missing our argument. We’re not saying ‘’incest is biologically problematic, therefore humans are inherently hardwired to avoid it.’’ We’re saying ‘’incest is biologically problematic, therefore the groups of humans who just happened to learn to object to it, over the long run, fared better than the groups of humans who just happened to not learn to object to it, and so the groups of humans who are around today object to incest.’’

But that’s beside the point. As I’ve already said- twice- I don’t believe sylvari emotions are “of human origin.” The closest anyone else has come to saying that is Rognik, whose claim was that sylvari might have imitated what they saw humans doing after they came into contact, not that their psychological framework was laser-copied over from a human source. I also earlier marked off social reasons why romance may be attractive, even in beings that don’t have biological reasons or “animal programming”.