R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
I disagree. I am 100% for characters from the personal story returning to the scene, especially those who dropped off the face of Tyria after their arc was finished. It’d go a long way towards rectifying one of the biggest shortcomings of the personal story.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
To the best of my knowledge, no other lore dev has commented- and frankly, I don’t expect them to. What we’ve done here is ripped into one of their colleagues with uncalled for venom, in some cases devolving into deliberate personal attacks. Angel’s input has been rejected, insulted, and deemed beneath the very community for whom she found these answers in the first place- after all, these questions include some rather big ones, and the answers were given on a solely voluntary basis as an acknowledgement of the devs’ appreciation for how much the fans care about Tyria. She was in no way required to do this interview, and we were in no way entitled to have those questions answered. To be responded to in such a condescending, patronizing manner… no, I don’t think lore devs will be sticking their necks out again anytime soon (same goes for living story writers.)
Honestly, I think this comes down to a stylistic preference. Angel’s tone is not at all the same as Jeff’s, Ree’s, or Scott’s. There’s a… less professional, more enthusiastic feel to it, and some here link that to less educated about her world. I don’t think that’s the case. I just believe she’s new to answering interviews (in any event I can’t recall one from her before) and didn’t fully weigh what she said. I also think she gave us more than some of the others might (a full interview, and not a single tease or dodging of a question?) and that, combined with other factors, led some here to draw the erroneous conclusion that she invented facts by herself.
My two cents, anyway.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
It’s unclear, but magic seems to be a natural occurring force in Tyria, like gravity or heat. And the stone was originally created by the seers to starve out the EDs. The sundering occurred after Abaddon opened the floodgates, so to speak, in an attempt to control magic. What it supposedly did was limit how many things any one individual could do with magic… but Angel’s comments cast doubt on that version of events.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Actually, we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Abaddon did not create magic. He just parceled out what he found in the Bloodstone.
Also, good to see someone new trying their hand here! Welcome to the forum!
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
… You know, I never really thought on this, but Gandarel’s right. Disregarding magitech (aka sci-fi) the development of magic seems to have come to a screeching halt. Nearly every magical plot point that I can think of is either "this artifact is from Orr!’ or “the Durmand Priory discovered such-and-such in some long-forgotten tome.” From the charr and asura, it’s understandable, but no contemporary human magics feature in the storyline. Ditto with sylvari (maybe Trahearne’s cleansing ritual, but honestly, that felt more like a sidetrack than the main plot to me). Norn I suppose I’ll let off the hook, as their powers have always been derived from a primal connection with their totems, and not independent magic.
EDIT: This makes me even more disappointed that Scarlet is an engineer, with more hordes of robots at her command. I know it’d be a bit cliche, but she would have made a great necro, and that might have put magic back in the proper spotlight.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Aye. You’ll find stones, if not identical, at least very similar to that one in most jotun camps with preexisting architecture. Dredgehaunt does have a notable amount without accompanying jotun, though.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I don’t pay too much attention to development things, but I believe that someone said that somewhere down the road they’ll decide rather or not to release new books. In any event, it’s way, way off.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Ceara also spent eight years in the Grove before striking out, so she has to be at least fifteen.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Point 1: Flax is not Inquest. He likes that they get results, but he has no special investment in the well-being of the organization.
Point 2: Flax really doesn’t look that old to me. He’s still got a full head of hair, and his face is not particularly geezerish. If pressed, I’d place him at late middle age. Compare him to Phlunt, and he certainly seems to be younger.
Clarification: 88 years, not 92. Not that it changes the argument.
Finally, a curiosity: Do you have the source for the 120 figure handy? I believe you, I just always like to see stuff I’ve missed.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Pg. 266. Datewise, that be 1237 AE.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Oh? Did I miss a grave or a bit of dialogue?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’ve been stewing on this for a while- I honestly expected someone else to bring it up already, but no one has that I saw. In Sea of Sorrows Yomm mentions a Councilor Flax. So, feel free to state your feelings: is it more unlikely that Rata Sum has had two consecutive Councilor Flaxs, or that Flax has been on the Arcane Council for at least 88 years?
And since it’s likely to come up: a dev once said that asura live about ten percent longer than humans. From gravestones, we know that humans can live into their eighties, and in rare cases their nineties. So Flax could by that math fit that timeframe, IF he has enjoyed an extremely long life, IF he came into his position at a very young age, and IF he is currently on his last legs. However, he does not appear to be particularly old in-game, so it is very unlikely that he is the same person unless if he has found a way to prolong his life (not entirely out of the realm of possibility.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Elementalist magic, akittens roots, isn’t as complicated as a mesmer’s- it’s obviously simpler to toss a fireball than to mess around in someone else’s head. Elemental magic also seems to be the natural, raw form, with elementals existing in areas of magical concentration rather than, say, random copies of people who have passed through. That doesn’t mean that today’s elementalist magic is primitive though. And no school of magic can really be said to be stronger or weaker than another- kind of an apples and oranges thing.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Primordus and Jormag have been awake significantly longer than Zhaitan- Primordus in particular has been up and kicking for nearly twice as long. Kralkatorrik, however, has been awake for less than a decade.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The main difference, as touched upon in that article, is that the asura as a race want to understand the Eternal Alchemy, where the Inquest as an organization want to control it.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The Inquest power select inventions with dragon energy, but the asura as a whole eschew the process. If you are referring to the Central Transfer Chamber, it would seem that the magic the dragons radiate while hibernating is uncorrupted, and therefore not dragon energies at all.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Despite Gandarel’s claim, there are many refrences to GW1 characters in-game, especially heroes and henchies. But like BuddhaKeks said, this is Tyria (continent), so almost all of those references have been about Tyrians (again, continent). You hear a lot about Pyre, Jora, and Gwen, and their legacies; one of the Separatist camps is a nod to Kieran, as is Logan’s heritage; Vekk and Livia both get small references throughout the game; and Ogden and Anton both appear in-game. When/if we reach Elona, I would expect similar nods to the Nightfall heroes.
In the meantime, though, if I can slip you a red herring… there’s a charr called Razah in the Black Citadel.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: most of the threads on this forum about the future of GW2 (less so the ones from the last couple months; concerns about the Living Story have superseded concerns about dragons.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Praetor’s Canton, up on its second level.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Except the Orrians DIDN’T abdicate their lives. One vizier cast one spell with or without the knowledge that it would destroy the nation. It wasn’t an acknowledgement of charr supremacy, it was more like the mother of all backfires.
You can’t have a claim to a nation that no longer exists, and claiming land only works within the context of an existing government. However, humans do have a strong claim to the things on that land, including such monuments as the cathedrals, by the dual justifications of cultural relevancy- these things are innately worth more to the humans than to any other race because of their shared history- and divine right- much of the architecture of Orr seems to have come from the gods themselves, and humans are their chosen people.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Actually, now that you mention the centaurs, there is a Whispers agent in the Black Citadel who mentions rumors that the centaurs and Flame Legion have approached each other…
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
My own experiments with Dwayna statues (only uncorrupted temple I could find) bore no such results.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
A quick note about the supposed Inquest xenophobia- there’s no evidence for it that I know of. Actually, one of the asura story arcs show a sylvari member of an Inquest krewe. They’re interested in gaining knowledge, and I can’t see them turning away any potential sources of it, no matter what race.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Again, they aren’t universally loved. Many members of the other four races feel uneasy around sylvari. You mentioned Caithe and Killeen, but both had problems fitting into their respective groups. Logan and Rytlock still think Caithe is shady, a ‘conniving vegetable’, and Killeen creeped Dougal out repeatedly. There are NPCs, particularly in the Black Citadel and, iirc, either Rata Sum or Metrica Province that share the opinion that they are spreading worryingly fast, often invoking the term ‘weeds’. Bottom line, the sylvari are not universally loved. ANet just put too much emphasis on them, trying to make up for their absence from GW1, and people can’t be bothered to look past the resultant deluge of good press.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Eso-: inner.
Political: of, pertaining to, or concerned with politics
Para-: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/para-?s=t
scientologist: a nutty religious movement (unlikely), or someone who undertakes the scientific study of science.
Put it all together and it looks like you have someone who specializes in the impact of politics on science. Most asuran “technobabble” is like that. It takes a lot of work to put together, and the meaning is very rarely clear, but it is not simply meaningless.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
What McCoy said is that creating an illusion that only one person can see is very difficult- that is, personalizing the illusion so Person A sees something different than Person B. That holds up- for every case of illusions in the game that you list, everyone in the area sees the same thing as each other.
EDIT: That note about the mesmer community, though, and especially the bit about an inner circle… is she saying there’s some sort of overarching mesmer organization?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Scarlet was in a transcendent state at the time, and she claims that what she saw was the very fabric of reality itself. All that proves is that the Pale Tree is herself a transcendent being. The circumstance was too far removed from the norm to make any blanket statements about the sylvari race.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Actually, they don’t. Unless you count the elementals they spawn, which have certainly been a blessing for farmers.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
“They’re a young race of people who have a strong tendency to learn faster than anyone due to their giant shared, but not truly shared racial conscious.”
I’ll give you that one, but they’re also very young, and many of them struggle with some aspects of common knowledge. But yes, that’ll be a problem once we start seeing sylvari reach 50+ years.
“Despite humans losing their god, they essentially have their own with the Pale Tree, who is pretty much a demi-god (if not a god outright, as seems implied by the Scarlet short story).”
The Pale Tree is not even close to the level of the human gods. Really, she can only do two things: grow sylvari, and maintain the dream. While the later does give her access to a large pool of knowledge, she’s still a tree, and can’t do anything about it without her children’s help. Compare to Balthazar, who was said to have scoured the entire Orrian peninsula, or Melandru, who turned those ashes into a verdant paradise.
“Immune to magics of the series main antagonist (dragons).”
Again: they still die. Yes, the dragon’s armies are formed by corrupting people, and if sylvari were the primary component of an army the dragons would be severely hindered. But they aren’t, they’re roughly one-fifth of the Pact. Not being able to reclaim one out of every five potential new soldier isn’t a massive setback.
“So far have one character who is the games main good guy, and another who is the games main villain (that isnt a dragon)”
The character critique or Trahearne has been done to the ground, but the important bit here is that he isn’t the game’s “main good guy.” Yes, the perception exists because he seems to be better rewarded than the PC, but it’s still the PC that is the primary protaganist, without whom the Pact never would have been founded, without whom none of Trahearne’s plans could have succeeded, and without whom Zhaitan never would’ve been destroyed. Yes, the portrayal is bad, but consider: all Trahearne really has to his name now is an unparalleled knowledge of a mostly defunct threat and a single great victory that woud have been futile without us players’ subsequent efforts above Arah.
“Well loved or at least tolerated by all the races with rather little explanation for it”
Patently false. The charr on the whole can’t stand sylvari, and tolerate them only because their imperator forces them to play nice, and the asura on a whole are either irritated by sylvari (and most races) or view them as potential lab experiments. Your mistake is taking the feeling of camaraderie that exists in the Pact, the Orders, and Lions Arch, and applying it to the whole game. Yes, most of the personal story revolves around those centers, but in four out of five of those cases sylvari are embraced simply because all hands are needed.
“The one member of destiny’s edge who can’t really be said to be at fault for their breaking up, and who the other 4 all still respect.”
Also not true. Rytlock and Logan at the very least don’t trust Caithe, due to her habit of holding secrets and attempting to manipulate others.
“Makers and users of pretty much the series most powerful weapon (that we know of).”
If you are referring to Caladbog, that is hardly the most powerful weapon. It bypassed certain immunities to harm in the powerful undead and seemed to act as a conduit to combat Zhaitan’s corruption specifically. That’s not “most powerful”, that’s “most specialized.”
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Like I said, probably no direct connection.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
What those other references didn’t have were odd behaviors manifesting in beings living in the ruins of a bastion of mursaat power/worship.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’m assuming it’s been taken down? Googling only led to several places that didn’t cite their source, several pages that cite the wiki, and a disturbing amount of KuduxMalomedies.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I doubt there’s a direct link to the asura, although fans have been crazy about it for years over the Rata Sum thing. My thoughts are that there’s lingering mursaat influence (or a lingering mursaat…) that’s affecting the skritt in the area, causing them to become hyper-aggressive. The asura come to study the skritt, and the influence starts affecting their golems too, and seemingly requisitions some as guards. (If you interact with the golems at the research station, their behavior, while not hostile, is certainly… erratic.)
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Don’t forget her club! :P
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Gotta love this forum’s search feature… /sarcasm
Here are some of the old threads: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Origin-of-The-Pale-Tree/first#content and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Slyvari-a-dragon-minion/first#content. Credit to Konig for digging those up when this came up three months ago. At the time he also deemed it worth adding on that Malyck proves sylvari are not particularly homicidal or practitioners of dragon worship even without exposure to Ventari’s Tablet.
EDIT: As a personal point of interest… can anyone tell me where it’s stated that Kudu was mixed up in what happened to Malomedies? I’ve checked every forlorn corner of the game I could find and it’s availed me naught, so I’m assuming it’s from an interview I missed… or unsubstantiated rumor-mongering on the part of the wiki.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
Technically, Scarlet might not be one of their superiors- she could be outside of the organization altogether.
And looking at the geographical area that the Aetherblade’s bases are in, and the fact that their pirates, the charr are probably from Lion’s Arch, and too far removed from their race’s culture to care. Although…
Notice how the Aetherblades and Molten Alliance never work together? One has to be driven off before Scarlet will call in the other. What tactical sense would that make? Assuming it’s not just mechanics (most likely) perhaps Scarlet feels the need to keep them separate.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
There had to have been something big about Caithe and Faolain. And whatever it was, it completely changed her- what we saw of what she saw is nowhere near enough to account for such a dramatic alteration of her personality.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
It’s also built into the side of the College of… Dynamics, I think. There’s a vista that showcases it on Rata Sum’s top level.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Actually, if you spend time in Sparkfly…
The hole here is that the notion that sylvari are dragon minions has been thoroughly debunked. Several times. That, and dragon minions are not immune to other dragons’ corruption- see Kudu’s Monster and Subject Alpha.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The Michotl are friendly- there’s even a heart to help them. They’re also blue. The person taking those screen caps just didn’t know what they were looking at.
And I agree that there is more to this- all of the vision we saw had to do with sylvari. Whatever she saw after that has to be what drove her ‘mad’ and has her targeting humanity, ‘cause the human race isn’t mentioned at all in that story.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Aye. This is what was needed to save Scarlet as a character, and it holds interesting implications for Tyrian metaphysics, and the nature of the Pale Tree. I just wish they hadn’t already depicted Scarlet as a shallow, nay, flat character, not unlike the Aetherblades. I worry that some may be unable to let go of that first impression.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I disagree. The writing here is nowise as bad as the last couple have been. Furthermore, the story is fulfilling an actual useful function again. There is no way that much backstory could have been satisfactorily communicated in-game (well, perhaps a Lost Shores style scavenger hunt tracing Ceara’s footsteps), and it’s stuff that us players actually benefit from knowing. As for Ceara herself, she still seems unnaturally talented, but other than that there is nothing objectionable about her character. She’s a megalomaniac who just might be justified in her high opinion of herself, a sylvari that rebels against the Pale Tree and her Dream but has better sense than to become the Nightmare’s slave, a mortal playing at godhood. Yes, the scope goes a bit beyond most of Guild Wars’ villains, and yes, there’s really no reason that a sylvari should be able to out-asura an asura. However, she is not flat, she has plausible reasons for being the way she is, and she is relatable to a degree. She doesn’t check out as a Sue of any form.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
So, it’s less that she’s crazy and more that she’s operating on principles beyond our understanding. I suppose I can work with that. Though it would’ve been nice if we had gotten that impression from Scarlet herself in-game.
Also, I’m even more disappointed by the fight mechanics now.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’ll agree that she probably knows more than the Order is necessarily comfortable with- for instance, even if she doesn’t know where the Chantry is, she certainly is able to recognize it when she sees it under attack. I think in this case it’s mostly a cost-benefit analysis for the Order- they have to hope she’s on their side, or in the worst case that she doesn’t know enough to bring them down, but it’s worth the risk because the alternative would be to be without spies and agents within one of the most important races on Tyria.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
“Only a few memories reach the Pale Tree: the most important or those that have the greatest emotional impact or meaning. They can include entire scenes from a sylvari’s life, such as their first battle or their first time cooking an apple pie. They can also be a single poignant moment such as pain, fear, or the face of an enemy.
A sylvari has no control over what experiences are gathered. They cannot communicate with the tree in this manner; the Mother Tree is drawing in hundreds of thousands of fragments from her children."
That was from the sylvari blog post way back when. I know it’s not well-communicated in-game, but that’s true of much of what was in those posts.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Gotcha. Personally, I believe her ‘special dispensation’, and maybe a bit more, was achieved by buddying up with the Inquest, but I don’t feel I have enough information to stick my neck out and speculate on the exact nature of the relationship.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Is it actually stated anywhere that she has ‘benefactors’?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
That grudge, I think, is where most of the expansion on her backstory will take place. pre-patch build up aside, she deliberately threatens human society. Also, did you notice how humans are the only ‘major’ race she didn’t supposedly learn from?
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
‘Scarlet’ isn’t really a sylvari name anyway. An obvious villain name without having any apparent depth beyond the negative connotations? I’ve no doubt she picked it for herself in preference to the name she awoke with. Same with Briar.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.