Guild Wars 2

As much as I would love to see Menzies, I fear the fanbase would howl if he was tied to Scarlet.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it’s a fact that just needs to be worked around. In my experience, squashing creativity, however good the intent may be, will also kill enthusiasm, and that is more vital to a conversation than clarity. Better to ask for clarification than to castigate the author.

Of course, that Firstborn may have changed her or his mind and abandoned their own teachings. That, I think, is the point of ANet leaving these things open- they can write these three to fit whatever demand they might need to in any not-yet-conceived plot.

In the meantime, I’ve just been treating them all like Dagonet- they have prestige, sure, but no importance, and so what they’re doing doesn’t matter.

Maybe, but that’s neither here nor there. We’re a forum; we have no standardized format, and we certainly have no standardized style, and we’re better off that way.

I’ll see if I can dig it up. It might have been one of the Ashenfold ones, though, and that site has gone bellyup.

If I can’t turn up anything, and nobody else here can either, your friends are of course under no obligation to take our word for it.

EDIT: So there’s this (around the seven minute mark) where Jeff Grubb says Abaddon is dead. There was another text interview later on, but I think it was Ashenfold, unfortunately.

The Pale Tree actually will talk about the Soundless if you’re a sylvari. She doesn’t say much about her opinion on them, but she does point out “Some cannot bare the burden of shared pain.” To me, that would seem to indicate a sympathetic outlook.

As she doesn’t even respond to the Nightmare Court with hostility- only sadness and pity- I can’t see her treating the Soundless as any worse than slightly wayward children.

As for the Nightmare Court’s treatment of the Tree… I actually think the way Ysvelta treats Tiachren in The Heart Of Nightmare is a really close parallel. They start out trying to win the Tree over to their side- that was, after all, the entire reason Cadeyrn founded it- but the Nightmare twists them, and the Pale Tree’s steadfast refusal to give credence to their beliefs and way of life slowly fosters hate. They’ve become estranged from their roots to the point that the Knight of Embers is gleeful towards the prospect of burning the Grove, and the Tree, to the ground- the only thing stopping them is their desire for sylvari supremacy, and by extension the need to preserve the source of sylvari.

“The connection between the Mouvelian calendar and our real-world calendar is a practical one.” Meaning, they want their in-game calender to line up with the real world calender.

@Foxx That’s exactly the point we’re making. The passage of game time, as portrayed in real time, is a purely mechanical contrivance, and so the devs attempting to link the two in lore with the calender retcon is of necessity going to fall flat on its face. The two were never meant to sink up, and it is far too late to change that, especially with only a declaration that reads as if it was thrown together on the spot.

Perhaps the company has it’s reasons, but unless they care to share them myself and many others will naturally feel put off by unnecessary and ill-advised changes.

… Everything past the first paragraph is (perfectly valid, I might add) theorycrafting on the nature of the Dream, and what it means for the sylvari race. I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but I’m going to guess you either did a bare skim at best (something I would fault you on), or were put of by his rather distinctive style of portrayal (something I would tend to sympathize with).

Thoughts about the packaging, good or ill, aside, the meat is still sound.

Not really, though ANet is certainly leaning in that direction. The necromancer is about the curses and suffering that draw out dying and the remains left behind afterwards- the physical realm of death. The ritualist is entirely about the spiritual realm- spirits after they depart from the bodies soon to become a necromancers meat puppet. The tone of the necromancer class has a morbidity to it that does not sit easily with the ritualists role. Where the necromancer focuses on exacerbating the fear of death with ever more grotesque exemplars, the ritualist approaches it as a natural part of existence to respect and draw power from like any source. The tone is simply too different, and one class cannot take from another without stripping the additions of what made them distinct in the first place.

TL;DR: I love ritualists. I’m only fond of necromancers. I wouldn’t want to see the greater subsumed within the lesser.

Either way, I highly doubt the provisions are being paid for by the government at the other end of the gate. They have easier access to the markets, but that doesn’t equate to a free ride in them.

It is an interesting theory. Personally, I wouldn’t jump to Caithe or Faolain- they’re both very invested in their respective aspects of the Dream- but who knows? We know next to nothing about Caithe’s history before Edge of Destiny, other than a vague “she traveled and saw a great darkness”.

Rednik.3809:

Because Ebonhawke is too small to sustain real independent kingdom (without constant help from Kryta, and why Kryta will give them help for free if they are don’t want to be part of Kryta?), and it’s not like High Legions are gonna give them additional territories just for pretty eyes. Where they are planning to expand, into Crystal Desert?

The High Legions already have given them additional territories, more than enough to see them through for a long time- especially given the inevitable population drain of defending those territories from ogres and branded. They’ve the entire Fields of Ruin to work with now, and south-eastern Blazeridge Steppes. And in any event, it seems to be rare in Tyria for population pressures to reach the point of forcing expansion. Too many ways out there for a person to die.

Out of curiosity, though… what aid do you figure they would need from Kryta? The only thing mentioned in-game is provisions, and that’s a moot point with the asura gate and ranches north of the fortress.

Riannoc had a Wyld Hunt, iirc, so he probably wouldn’t be messing around with that sort of thing. I’m guessing it’s one of the unnamed ones, or Amaranda (there’s a line in her quest that could be interpreted to mean that she is a Firstborn… although the wiki seems to have decided she’s secondborn. Huh.) In any event, it’s heartening to be reminded that they haven’t forgotten about the remaining three.

As for the ritualist… the way that interview reads, I think the devs aren’t conceiving of it as “rituals in addition to modern spellcasting” but rather “rituals replacing in part modern spellcasting”. That would make the ritualist inherently less effective than an elementalist, or a mesmer, or what have you. Which is a shame. I miss my ritualist terribly…

Well, I’m off to play GW1.

EDIT: Ah, I see that Trahearne names her as secondborn if you choose to seek her. So much for that idea.

Sorry mate. There was an interview before launch where the devs confirmed that Abaddon is dead and gone for good.

Except that Ebonhawke would never stand for that, and Kryta doesn’t have the troops to spare to enforce it.

ALL Ebonhawkers believe themselves Ascalonian, and beholden only to the Ascalonian crown. The Separatists are no more patriotic in that regard than any of their kin; they only object to the Kingdom of Ascalon making peace with its despoilers.

And no logical reason? What about the only homes your family has ever known? What about the generations of your ancestors that have fought and died for it? For people who value home and family, there is no other logical place to live.

Except that it is directly stated to be the spring equinox, and back when that whole “how much longer will we be huddled up shivering” thing actually was the point of Wintersday, it was enforced by beings who could overwrite your RL notions of when the snow thaws and when it stops falling.

Not to mention that I myself live in a place where at least one year out of every two the largest snow of the season comes within a week on either side of the equinox.

Even if that were the case, it undermines your point. Months after they’d gotten what they were going to out of her, they were still throwing away their lives in the cause of… causing mayhem? Sorry, not buying it.

You’re forgetting Scarlet’s invasions, which are STILL ongoing.

The Inquest have at least as many lines as Scarlet herself. They’re just easy to miss. The wiki doesn’t seem to have them either.

Presumably, if we go to the DSD, we’ll be seeing a lot more of the largos. That’s all speculation at the moment though.

In the meantime, you may be happy to learn that there are actually 11 largos in-game at present, most of which are listed here. Last I checked it was missing one of the Orr ones, but is otherwise complete.

I agree with Konig. The changing of magic doesn’t change the spells; it just allows people to find new and better spells.

There was that “things only started going bad after the consultant arrived” line from the Inquest at the start.

Aye, and they all seem to be in fissures and crevasses (all the ones I’ve seen, anyway, with the partial exception of the LC), which would be very cramped working quarters for a giant.

I’ll admit to the tengu crossing my mind- the Caromi and Avicara certainly seemed nomadic- but again, the geographical dispersion doesn’t match up.

*does a double take

The Soundlessness (not the actual term) was developed by a firstborn?

Which one, I wonder…

Also, it was nice to see Angel return to the questions she sowed regarding the bloodstones. Seeing how toxic that proved last time, I had given up hope that it would be addressed again.

Erukk.1408:

Well…

If Scarlet does invade Lion’s Arch, Evon is a shoe in if another Captain dies. It will also appease all the Evon support. Minus the FoA fractal though.

Even if that happens, I expect it will be a while off. After all, we are only just now starting to see a hint of the story repercussions of our vote. They’ll need to make something important happen, something that clearly wouldn’t have happened if we picked Evon, before they throw him on the Council anyway.

You are correct. ANet planned on including books- to the point of writing up hundreds of them, according to a dev- but it was decided that implementing the systems to allow such large amounts of text to be viewed would tie up resources better used elsewhere. Why? That was an internal company decision, and therefore we are not party to the information. The dev (Bobby Stein, I think, though I could be wrong) did say that there is a chance that the books’ll be implemented later, but there are no plans for it at the moment, so it is unlikely to come in the next half-year or so, and may not come at all.

The only thing we can do is express interest in seeing them, without any assurances that aught will come of it.

The problem there, Yumiko, is that, to use your terminology, Scarlet has stolen the voices of those factions that fall under her shadow.

The Flame Legion is dying in the Steamspur Mountains. How does that further their attempts to control the charr race?

The dredge are yielding up their lives to a surfacer who couldn’t care less if they lived or died. How does that fit with the generations of cultural paranoia of outside enslavement?

All those benefits you’ve listed? Every one is already acquired. Why then do any of them continue to serve, when doing such can only cost them without any future gain? The only argument that can be made is that they have confidence Scarlet will vanquish all; yet how can they, when clearly only Scarlet knows her endgame, and every ploy she’s made has turned into a costly defeat for her allies?

You’re right that this game is about characters making their own stories- but Scarlet in writing hers erases all others.

THAT is why Thalador calls her a black hole- all that come into her sway are sucked in to her ego and never leave.

I thought of grawl as well when I saw the paint, but two things dissuggest the notion to me: to the best of our knowledge they have neither means nor reason to cut holes into rock, especially high rock (in Labyrinthine Cliffs and Mon Maelstrom they go from the bottom of the rock face all the way up to the top), and further, grawl have never been known to settle west of the Shiverpeaks, let alone as far into the Maguuma as we can now go.

EDIT: It is also worth noting that the only place I know of where grawl live in a chasm similar to where these ruins are found, Firesnake’s Tail (what is it with grawl and tails?), the walls are smooth and unbroken. Still, I’m not willing to discount the idea entirely. The grawl are as strong a contender as any. As far as the grawl clay/paint goes, the color is somewhat similar, though that on the ruins appears darker (age, perhaps?) and grawl don’t seem to use white. The largest difference is that the grawl use large, sweeping lines and whorls, covering much of the surface. The meager outlining done on the ruins would seem an ill fit. A possible counter argument is that as the grawl use clay, it is possible that much of it flaked off as time dragged on.

Supply deposit… hm. I don’t think so, simply because of how inaccessible they can be. In the Maelstrom ones (which are throughout the chasms of Mon Maelstrom, which in turn is just south and southeast of the lab on the southern slopes of the mountain) there are a couple places where the nooks are actually carved along the lower edges of otherwise natural bridges. In other places they’re in the middle of an otherwise sheer wall of rock, far from both the top and the bottom. Perhaps idols were placed in these, but if so I don’t think they were ever meant to be recovered.

Maybe, but that’s a real large sack of meat if you use Flesh Golem.

A quick note- you’re misinterpreting “The spirits who had given their lives to earn access to the hallowed afterlife were outraged.” They didn’t die so that Odran could enter the Hall of Heroes, but so that they themselves would earn a place there in their afterlife. While that line alone is open to either interpretation, the bit about the Hall of Heroes in the same source (the Prophecies Manuscripts) makes it clear.

Also, the bosses in the Crown Pavilion can’t have been from Odran’s time- Odran died 200ish years before destroyers reawoke for the first time in millennia.

I disagree, because of a point you’ve already made- GW1’s narrative didn’t involve perspective or point of view. There was no look at the inner workings of the other side, no perspective- nothing by which to judge rather the deeds we saw were “inherent” or “situational”. When the other side is fully opaque, as the charr were in Prophecies, neither term is applicable, as there is simply nothing to judge by… save any biases the player brings to the table, which is the very thing you are arguing we shouldn’t do, Obsidian.

This is my second call for assistance to the lore community, and I’m hoping that it won’t fall on its face like the Thaumanova one.

Attached below is a picture of an architectural style that has troubled my mind since July, and is largely responsible for my sour opinion of Bazaar of the Four Winds (also my drake, because as Rylan’s pose clearly shows I was feeling lazy). No particular race or creatures are associated with it, and I know of nothing like it in Guild Wars 1- but the reason I am writing this is because I have decided I know too little.

The purpose of this thread is two-fold: A.) for y’all to share everything that you know or discover about these ruins; B.) for you to go crazy with theories and speculation, and critique of theories and speculation, which you have a propensity for doing even without invitation. So have at it! The ultimate goal, if you are the sort to keep that sort of thing in mind, is to discern, if we can, who built/carved these things, and why they were abandoned.

The locations where I have seen it (to be expanded as needed if new sites are brought to my attention):
-The Gallowfields in Brisban Wildlands
-Coalpit Watchpost in Fireheart Rise (pictured)
-Mon Maelstrom in… do I need to say?
-Labyrinthine Cliffs, currently inaccessible

And as always, my sincere thanks to those who make constructive contributions. My heart will be grateful to you, when next it is between all-consuming obsessions over trivial things.

They may be related. Even if they are I doubt it’ll have any bearing on her story.

But we DON’T know how the charr should deploy their troops, because we don’t even have anything remotely equivalent to magic in real life, and that will be a major factor, perhaps the greatest factor, in determining where and how to deploy troops. For all that we know, the charr might not use tanks at all in an assault on the asura.

I agree with all the rest of your points though. I just can’t see the asura being capable of mounting any real defense.

Rednik.3809:

You know why lasers are still considered as pretty bad weapon IRL? Because if you want to make laser useless, you don’t need all those things from your post. You just need some good smoke/aerosol source.

Yes, but it also must be kept in mind that unlike IRL, where lasers are beams of light, in Tyria they are at least partially magic- they can follow trajectories, and as often as not fire orbs rather than beams. Refraction would not be an adequate defense.

Cataclysm.7491:

Would my two suggestions (mine and my sisters) be feasable in a Lore point of view though? Is there the kind of magic in Tyria that would allow for both of them scenarios to take place?

For the most part, I think that you’ve both done a laudable job of reconciling a mechanic I’ve always simply dismissed (for my part, I have an amphibious pet and do my utmost to not swap pets at all). What you both suggest may theoretically be feasible- it falls under the “no reason to believe it wouldn’t work but never has actually been tried” category- but I would make one minor correction. Nature magic has never displayed any capability for summoning or teleporting solid creatures. That’s more the domain of mesmer magic or asura magi-tech. You could rather simply, I think, substitute one of those things in, but do not feel that you have to! We’re here to make suggestions; I would never presume to tell you how to play.

And another thing, too- both Gwen and the character easily recognize the pool as a scrying device, and the character shows some familiarity with how such things work. That all suggests that the pool is not unique in function. One of the premises of the argument that links seers specifically to the pool is that it is either fairly or entirely unique. The argument that the “story had to come from somewhere” is thus invalid support, because even humans are familiar with multiple possible sources.

I still feel that seers are the most likely candidate, but the argument that the pool is proof just doesn’t hold water (it’s okay, you can laugh). Simple process of elimination is a sounder means, and either way it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Malxa_Pyronetics.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cover_Krattz_as_he_neutralizes_the_suspicious_skritt_device.

They guess that it was the toxin. It’s just a guess.

They didn’t say what she took, just that something was taken.

I just went up there to check on Rox, but it looks like Diessa Plateau has been reverted to its pre-Flame and Frost appearance (the little ranch north of Butcher’s Block seems to be gone too, but the steam vents and Cragstead are still visible on the western border). The option remains to enter the instance, but when I do so I’m simply confronted with a metal wall and nothing on the other side. I honestly don’t know what to make of it, but I don’t think that it was intentional.

The arboreal spirit says that the druids are sleeping- presumably within their husks.

Before the successful charr invasion, yes, but the charr and Ascalonians had been at war since 100 BE. The Wall was built just shy of a thousand years into the conflict, in the last fifth of it (not counting the Ebonhawke Insurrection). That was Obsidian’s point there.

And no, just because someone put it on the wiki does not mean that it is a fact. Surmia is the only city we can say for sure was built after the Great Northern Wall. I agree with you that Drascir and Nolani were probably built after the Wall, but it is not a fact.

You’re thinking of Jungle Guardians which guarded the resting places of druids, but were not themselves druids. In GW1 druids had no physical body, and were without fail friendly.

As for why we don’t see more seeds, I think it just comes down to no one else has found the cave, or if they have they haven’t returned to habitated lands. Keep in mind that while the areas of the Tarnished Coast/Maguuma that we see in-game are pretty much tamed, most of the jungle, away west and north of Rata Sum, is still trackless wilderness. If nobody can find the seeds to bring them back into the sphere of influence of the five races, there’s no reason that we should see more of them.

Early March, seeing as the next release after Wintersday won’t be until the second half of January; but I too am hopeful that the extra month they have to work on these will prove fruitful.

Stephen.6312:

Sorry, my previous link took you to the top of the Wiki page for “Dream and Nightmare”. The correct link is: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/c/ca/Pale_Tree_concept_art.jpg/400px-Pale_Tree_concept_art.jpg

If you consider this picture, you’ll note an obvious discrepancy – the reflection of the Pale Tree looks markedly different. If you can rotate the image, flip it upside down: Now look at the reflection. What do you see? What is she?

Looks like it might be an early concept of her Avatar.

If I remember correctly, she’s an artifact of a Bar Brawl activity that got hyped before launch but was never fully implemented (same with the Shooting Range nearby). Originally ANet made it out like each city would have it’s own activity, but only Keg Brawl was ready at launch and since then they seem to have mostly abandoned the idea in favor of activities that tie into the living story.

http://wartower.tumblr.com/post/60458277036/this-lorespecial-is-about-scarlet-briar-the-evil

TL;DL: According to the writers, the speech was just more of what we’d gotten all Jubilee: humans are resilient, we cannot be broken, we will not yield, we are still here. Scarlet only heard the “we cannot be broken” part, and thought on a whim “we’ll see about that.” Unsatisfactory way to introduce a villain who had had four months of foreshadowing? Yes, but there you have it.

At the moment, I believe all we know about them for sure is that mysterious shielded machinery has sprung up absolutely everywhere that isn’t mechanically a city or starting zone, and there may or may not be three per map.