Guild Wars 2

Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s the same spot as Labyrinthine Cliffs. Marhan’s Grotto would be more to the northeast, on the edge of the snowy mountains.

Bbear.7830:

In the context of Charr culture, this ‘evolution’ of names would tie to the progression of individual Charr through the ranks/professions – younger Charr having profession or physical characteristic based names, older more experienced Charr having earned more individual family/clan based names through their deeds/achievements.

Parallels are great and all, but you can only carry them as far as there’s lore to support- and there’s no evidence that charr change their name for any reason but a change in warband. Rytlock Brimstone, the rebellious little punk soldier on the verge of being executed for insubordination, is still Rytlock Brimstone now that he’s in the highest ranks as a tribune and considered a hero and role model to his race.

draxynnic.3719:

I think the Pale Tree’s prophecy has largely come to pass. The lesser lights were the activation of the watchposts around Tarir, the greater light the egg, and the surrounding vines were Mordremoth’s siege on Tarir. It didn’t happen precisely as she envisaged (the Shadow of the Dragon was already dead by then, for instance), but it’s close enough to be recognisable.

Actually, looking back, I’m not sure the vision was a prophecy at all. It seemed more like she was trying to communicate knowledge without any reference to timescale- for instance, we see the egg dropping into the beam of light that’s probably telling us to take it to Tarir in the future, but then it seems to be back in Glint’s Lair, where the Master of Peace had already removed it seemingly years before.

In that sense, seeing as the Shadow of the Dragon was there, and assuming that it wasn’t just a warning that the Shadow was hunting for the egg, I wonder if what we were actually seeing was Tarir waking up right at that moment. Something seemed to call the Shadow away from the Grove in a heck of a hurry, before its job was done, and we know the Exalted awoke shortly before Heart of Thorns but never really got a when or why. Maybe, instead of just general mordrem activity, it was in response to the Master bringing the egg within a certain range? Or maybe even to something he specifically detoured to do along the way? ANet likes to play fast and loose with timescales, but even so, five LW episodes seems like a long time to get from central Dry Top to southwest Silverwastes unless he was doing more than travelling.

We’ve already got an answer to that. Ogden points out a couple different times, before we even start, that the process we underwent wouldn’t Ascend us.

Jhoul.6923:

Arden.7480:

This is not place for opinions about ANet.

You can post threads about story of Tyria (before and after Exodus) here.

Take care.

Isn’t the lore of each profession as important as the lore of the game? HoT came out and we don’t even know how we got this new power.

The only specific guideline to this subforum is that it’s to ‘discuss the lore and story of Tyria’. Concerns about how the financial model would impact that story, and a request to see more of that lore in the future, certainly qualify. We’ve had a number of these direct pleas to the devs in the past, even if they’ve traditionally never responded, and all of those posts have been left alone.

mexay.3902:

I can’t help but think maybe Abaddon had it in for the Mursaat? I know it’s just wild speculate but it does seem to add up a little

It could also be the other way around- perhaps the mursaat had it in for Abaddon. There’s been a lot of speculation about why, exactly, they let themselves be lured out of hiding where they were so vulnerable, and most of it revolves around them being tricked or conned and not knowing what all was on the table, but here’s a thought born of being up far too late with far too much tea: what if it was because they knew more than we did, or do? What if their reason for sealing the Door of Komalie wasn’t just to stave off Glint’s Flameseeker Prophecies, but the much larger specter of Nightfall? We know there were prophecies pointing to it, too, that they might have gotten ahold of. Maybe their retreat periodically required magic or something else from Tyria that Nightfall would’ve cut off, or maybe their sanctuary was threatened directly, either by Nightfall reaching farther through the Mists than we know, or by demons and titans and other reality-hopping monstrosities spreading unchecked?

Falkatore.3125:

but could there also be a way to explain how, now, a platinum ingot is only worth a few silvers?

I’m know about nothing regarding economics, especially when said economics is only a handwaved gameplay mechanic, but I do know it can’t be approached in this manner. For instance, a gold ingot? Worth less than two silvers on the TP, and a whopping six coppers from most merchants. You could say getting the official marks when it’s minted somehow makes the material a couple thousand times more valuable, but that makes it really easy for counterfeiters to exploit.

The way I see it, anyway, is that platinum hasn’t gone out of currency (there are a couple places where it’s mentioned in the story- pirates try to ransom Demmi for a hundred platinum, and I think Zojja bets some on your success for asura characters) but is just out of reach of your vagrant adventurers. In GW1, after all, it’s worth a hundred gold; only the richest GW2 characters are going to be carrying around more than four or five platinum worth. Still, though, I don’t have a whole lot to back it up, or to say why so much deflation has occurred. It’s just how I make sense of things.

Kossage.9072:

although I wonder how that information would be relevant to the ongoing storyline considering how minor a role Esthel played in the Unknown Parents branch of the human personal story.

To be fair, though, she was only minor because we stamped her out so fast. She was apparently ‘out in the open’ because she was personally overseeing the assassination of a boatload of the Queen’s faction, including Anise and Logan, who probably rank as the third and fourth most influential humans in Tyria. If she had actually gotten to attempt to pull in off, it would have been at least as big a deal as what went down in Caudecus’ Manor. It was just her bad luck that she didn’t know her first target had plot armor.

It’s not just those old textures anymore. We also have proper, full-world globes in game now- the mechanisms in the guild hall that let you portal out to mission locations include two.

Did Xera’s reality warping make a lot of minions? I know that her phantasms are a part of the Keep Construct fight, but if memory serves they only come a few at a time- more than our characters can make, sure, but not too impressive considering the other things she ended up doing.

And as for Reiko, again, if memory serves she could only copy one enemy at a time. I also interpreted the confusion over which one was the real Reiko as her bringing out a new development on mesmer abilities, that’ve since become the core gimmick of modern mesmers. It wouldn’t be notable these days.

Good points, all. It’s just the question of why it got to be that way that trips me up. As far as we know, Kryta has never undergone the kind of internal pressures and transformations that led to monarchs accepting parliaments and fetters to their power, and it seems weird that the system would just spring into being without that.

I did go back and pick through the interviews to try to track where I’d derived my notions from, and I think the Halloween TowerTalk Lore Special is the one.

It’s near the end (there’s no timestamps, but if you move the little bar under the ‘und’ you’ll be close) that they get into talking about the division of powers. They also make the comparison to the American system, but the reasoning behind it is interesting. While Scott McGough does make the point that Jennah ultimately calls the shots and that it’s very difficult for the Ministry to get anything done against her will, he then goes on to say that nothing gets done unless the queen and Ministry work together. He describes the basis for the division of powers, though, not in terms of laws or the rights or voice of the people, but instead:

“Kryta is a large and complicated kingdom, and it’s too large and too complicated for one person to say ‘the entire nation is going this way’. There are so many moving parts, you need a hierarchy with people in charge of different parts of the government itself to make everything work, and so that’s why Jennah suffers the kind of machinations that Caudecus was up to in the personal story. She needs the Ministry to effectively govern. I mean, I suppose if she were to become a bloody-minded tyrant she could wipe out the Ministry and replace them with her own hand-picked people, but that wouldn’t really solve the problem of needing those people to run the government. It’s better to have competent people who are all dedicated to the future of Kryta, rather than just have people who are going to rubber stamp what you want. Kryta is so large and so complicated at this point that one person, a single monarch, really can’t effectively govern it, and so it’s very much a balancing act between Jennah needing to maintain her position and her prestige, but she also needs to Ministry to make sure the wheels of government keep turning.”

It is odd that he stresses Kryta’s size so often when it only covers about half the area it did in GW1, but put that way, while it still makes the politicking a necessity, it sounds less like a constitutional monarchy and maybe more like a Canthan style of bureaucracy that happens to incorporate Kryta’s existing noble class. That makes for some interesting parallels between Caudecus and Reiko. It’s very possible I’m just reading too much into it, though.

DarcShriek.5829:

bearshaman.3421:

I don’t think Primordus is gonna be that much more powerful from Mordremoth’s death, BECAUSE Taimi stated that the vast majority of the magic from Mordremoth went into Glint’s Egg. Some went elsewhere but most of it had one destination.

Don’t forget, Primordus had a 100 year head start on Mordremoth.

200, actually. Well, 207ish. But what bearshaman was saying was just that Primordus wouldn’t have gotten much of Mordremoth’s magic, not that it’d be weaker than Mordremoth.

Torolan.5816:

Caudecus could retreat and basically give up his white mantle membership and be the new shadow boss of the Separatists.

I don’t think so. Separatists are basically an Ascalonian thing, and Caudecus is as Krytan as they come. It looks like they cooperated when their interests briefly aligned, but that doesn’t mean they’d let Caudecus join them, and they certainly wouldn’t answer to him.

It’s also worth considering Caudecus’ state of mind. He’s upset, frustrated, bitter, even before Lazarus ruined what should have been his crowning moment. He’s spent the last three or four years firmly under the queen’s thumb, and skipped town under very shady circumstances. I believe him when he says he won’t go back unless it’s at the head of an army.

As for the politics- it’s all well and good to talk about maneuvering, but it needs to be remembered that there’s no indication that Kryta has a constitution or the like. The Ministry exists because the monarch allows it to exist, and it’s meant to be an advisory body. The Shining Blade’s jurisdiction supersedes all others whenever and wherever the queen wants it to. Yes, Jennah has been playing nice, but that seems to only be because A.) she’s facing the very real possibility of a civil war and doesn’t want to fan the flames, B.) she supports the ‘everyone should have a voice’ principle that the Ministry is supposed to embody, and C.) Caudecus has done a masterful job of keeping his own hands clean while his underlings do the dirty work. None of that applies anymore. He snuck away to join with enemies of the state right as they incited a magical disaster that nearly leveled Kryta. An officer of the Shining Blade (and that’s what would matter legally, not Canach’s background beyond Kryta’s borders) found him there, and heard Caudecus confess to being the Confessor, and to his intent to lead the forces he’d already gathered to overthrow the crown. The, until very recently, highest ranking authority of the most universally lauded organization on the continent witnessed it. Politics can play clean-up afterwards, but right now, Jennah has far more than enough to justify Caudecus’ execution.

bearshaman.3421:

Agroman.7190:

TheMagicFace.9854:

My guess is after his memory was wiped from history, 250 years later, only the order of whispers and a few Priory members would know what he had actually done and how dangerous he and his acolytes actually were.

His memory wasn’t wiped from history. That was over 1300 years ago. Nowadays, Abaddon’s story is well known and even part of the basic religious texts of Kormir.

Where can you find these “basic religious tenets”? and not just for Kormir…

I don’t know if they’re in GW2, but they were everywhere in GW1. The basic idea is that each god has their own set of readily available scripture, some small part of which used to be put on each of their statues.

RazielSpecter.6295:

I have a question. We already kill Zaithan and Mordy, right? So Why their minions still on tyria? Shouldn’t they died yet?

It doesn’t work like that. We’ve seen several events with the risen after Zhaitan’s death (the Arah explorable paths, and Tequatl’s power boost in LS1) that show they’re carrying on more or less exactly as before, and there’s a line in the latest LS episode that the mordrem are still all over the place, and if anything, even more violent.

The minions don’t rely on the dragons to exist. They only need them to give direction. Think of it like a ruler and their army- just because the ruler dies doesn’t mean the troops all die too. What it does mean is the troops can’t receive new orders, or function as an organized whole anymore.

What about the Pact? They’re a faction in their own right, and certainly friendly and relevant. If gear’s an issue for you, they also have two complete weapon sets to choose from.

Inc.4753:

draxynnic.3719:

@Inc: That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying for a while now.

It’s possibly also worth noting that some aspects of the gods’ domains do seem to have some mutability: for instance, Lyssa seemed to claim water without giving anything up, which suggests that the elements are not critical parts of the divine portfolios – rather, they claim an element that they feel that they’re suited for.

Indeed, Lyssa taking on a third domain raises some question about the 6×2 format. Then again, we don’t know why (if at all) these are the magic numbers and wheter they are fixed or permit some form of flexibility. With two Dragons now defeated and the Tyrian spheres of Mind, Plant, Shadow and Death ‘released’ we haven’t seen anything particular happen within these spheres.

Lyssa’s not the only one, though. The character creation process lists three spheres for each god, that’s where we got the Lyssa as water in the first place (the others are Dwayna- healing, Balthazar- challenge, Melandru- growth, Grenth- darkness, and Kormir- spirit and order, since she was only given the one sphere of truth-not secrets- in GW1). Furthermore, NPCs will often tack on even more, if you go out and listen to the priests- Dwayna and light, Grenth and judgement, Lyssa and love, and so on. Which of these, if any, are full parts of their godly power and which are informal extrapolations by their worshipers isn’t clear. I know what one point, the fact that water got switched around had fed speculations that each god only really had one sphere innate to them, and that the elemental stuff wasn’t intrinsic to them in the same way. Or maybe they’re all godly spheres, and they just can’t be narrowed down and symmetrically categorized like the Dragons can.

Another theory (without any proof to back it up and perhaps a bit far-fetched) is that Lyssa taking on Water is just a part of the Abaddon coverup. The Gods couldn’t just let the element of Water disappear, because if Fire, Earth and Air have their own Gods, why not the fourth element? Lyssa could have taken up the domain just in name without actually ‘owning’ it. Who better to fool the people of Tyria than the Goddess of Illusion herself? ‘Secrets’ however would just remind the people that the Gods keep secrets from them and does not seem to be as likely a domain as Water (I don’t think many people saw ‘Secrets’ as a certain domain before Nightfall was released), so that one the Gods did not need to pretend to embody.

Nope. The Abaddon cover-up was Grenth being ice, and all of us just thinking that ice was how the gods portrayed water. It wasn’t such a stretch, given how much water magic takes the form of ice. Lyssa wasn’t formally associated with water at all until after GW1- she was with reflections, sure, as an extension of duality falling under her sway (another example of not being able to narrow down the spheres), but not water particularly.

Sirius.4510:

If Primordus is becoming more active, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll be hearing about it as soon as next episode of LWS3.

On that subject, there was an interesting map linked in another thread – not sure exactly how they got it but I presume from some pre-release content that was cut: http://imgur.com/bOwDeHt

Poking around on google, apparently that map was part of a ‘tengu confirmed!’ April Fool’s joke in 2014. To quote the story blurb that accompanied the image:

“The Quaggan have shown their true face, cast aside by the human gods over a thousand years ago they’ve sworn to take revenge on them and their worshipers. With the recent outburst of dragon magic they’ve started to summon their saviors back into the world of Tyria once and for all.
Join up with the proud Tengu and stop the bloodthirsty Quaggan from sacrificing more innocent civilians. Are you in time to stop the White Mantle and Mursaat from taking over Tyria once and for all?”

Nothing at all official there.

We refused to be marshall, Almorra took that as our resignation, and we went along with the idea. Apparently we’re out altogether now.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And with how tormented souls have a tendency to remain where they were killed (see the Brisban Wildlands ghosts), if enough souls remain they could form a quasi-titan or a titan as well.

I guess it depends on where the cut-off for ‘tormented’ is. The ones in Brisban seem confused, and lost, distressed even, but even the violent ones don’t appear to be in agony. That sort of thing always, to me, seems to be the result of an outside influence- the combination of sacrifice and magic-addiction linked to the bloodstone, the nature of the Realm of Torment, the shades in Godslost Swamp, the Foefire ritual, and so on. I guess there’s the Lady in White, too, but she seems much worse off than the Brisban or pirate ghost concentrations.

Narcemus.1348:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

That seems more to be relating not to “the gift of magic” which even more recent sources cite Abaddon as the sole giver but more in line with the events of the scriptures – particularly that of Grenth, and possibly Balthazar, Lyssa, and Dwayna.

…huh. I’ve always read that one too fast, I guess, and ended up seeing what I expected to see, but that more recent source? It’s not talking about Abaddon apportioning out magic at all.

Based on some of the other things Nickolas says, his mention of giving the stone away, rather than magic away may have been a misunderstanding of his. It does seem like this is a summary of his, and as such might not be truly accurate.

It’s worded as a layman’s understanding of a scholar’s knowledge, yes, but every other line in there is factually accurate as far as the non-retconned portions of previous sources tell us. I don’t see anything that’d make me think that he got it wrong, or that the Priory that his source founded would keep it in their ‘Special Collection’ if it had a factual mistake.

maxwelgm.4315:

they seem to be naturally occurring to an extent,

Eh…

Even if the Fury wasn’t doing something elaborate to create them, like you said, it’d still require a heap of tortured souls in close proximity, and I don’t think that’ll happen naturally. I’m on board with the Gorseval-as-quasi-titan theory (although he fell short of the full deal), but he wasn’t naturally occurring. He came about as a result of a very specific set of circumstances brought about more or less by design, which only happened to mirror certain other aspects of the Foundary and the Realm of Torment as a whole. It’s not like we’re going to be able to see titans spontaneously forming whenever and wherever the story decides it’d be cool to have them back.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Riannoc’s fate was unknown. His body unknown, his place of death, his sword. It was all unknown, except that he had died – because that fact was felt through the Dream. The entire beginning of chapter 3 for sylvari PS stresses this.

Reading back through the dialogue- they stress that the circumstances of his death, and the fate of his sword, are unknown, but they use much less clear language for the rest. They say Riannoc ‘was lost’, which could mean they didn’t know where he went or could just be another way of saying he died, and that he ‘vanished’, which doesn’t have a clear timeframe attached to it; you can vanish and be found again later.

By contrast, Secrets in the Earth is very clear. Iowerth immediately tells you to meet at Lychcroft Mere, where he then says, even before the ritual is cast, “The swamp may have swallowed Riannoc’s body, but it cannot keep us from contacting his soul.” That’s pretty incontrovertible evidence that they’d already figured out where he’d died, at which point it doesn’t seem odd to think one of them raised the marker. If it’d been Wayna, wouldn’t he have used a human tombstone?

given that hundreds would have died by now, the lack of graveyard indicates that burying the dead is an unusual occurrence at least and an uncommon decision to do at most – and the lack of memorial markers is equally an indication of it being an unusual occurrence or uncommon method.

I agree with that, but considering how sylvari die, I think a couple isolated cases does make a precedent for at least a practice the sylvari are aware of. It’s not so established as to be the ‘thing to do’, and I don’t think Trahearne’s at all likely to get buried, but I do think it’s an acknowledged option for sylvari like Gairwen, or whoever raised Riannoc’s marker, who feel the need to go through the motions of grieving.

Now, in relation to Trahearne: as anninke said there are other races who’d be honoring that. So I would expect a memorial, even without a body, for Trahearne and the sylvari fallen in that fight.

Getting back to the main point- this is pretty much where I am as well, whatever the Grove as a whole may or may not choose to do to honor him, and I think all three of us here are basically in agreement. My own take right now is that it’s something that has, or will, go on behind the scenes, but I prefer to think that just because ANet doesn’t include the segment for pacing reasons doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all, or even that our Commander didn’t attend.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

That seems more to be relating not to “the gift of magic” which even more recent sources cite Abaddon as the sole giver but more in line with the events of the scriptures – particularly that of Grenth, and possibly Balthazar, Lyssa, and Dwayna.

…huh. I’ve always read that one too fast, I guess, and ended up seeing what I expected to see, but that more recent source? It’s not talking about Abaddon apportioning out magic at all. It says the physically gave the Bloodstone away.

I’m going to have to give that more of a think, but at the least, it doesn’t clash with what Angel said. All the gods could’ve gifted magic, with only Abaddon going so far as to gift the stone.

And those wars were not related, by all indication, to Abaddon’s gift of magic but are probably referring to wars such as in the scriptures of Dwayna and Balthazar.

I agree about the Scriptures, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t connected to Abaddon’s giving. What Angel said was “Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out. King Doric begged the gods to slow the flow of magic back into Tyria and the gods granted his wish by shattering the Bloodstone into pieces and limiting their use. Abaddon was annoyed by this.” She linked them all together- that the wars over hundreds of years were addressed by splitting the Bloodstone. That wouldn’t make sense unless the wars were linked to the gift of magic. The only question at this point is whether they were caused by something Abaddon specifically had done, or whether all the gods had a hand in it, and Abaddon was just the one who refused to agree to the proposed solution.

That in-game book could describe either- perhaps giving the stone itself to mortals let them have more than the other gods wanted, or at least gave them incentive to fight for the thing, or maybe it didn’t but splitting the stone and dropping it in a volcano put an end to whatever Abaddon was hoping to accomplish by giving it out. It all boils down to A.) what these anonymous races could’ve used the stone for, and B.) the reason Abaddon gave it out, both of which are huge question marks right now.

pikkunana.7495:

If gods are alien of Tyria. That explain Seer and her spaceship in gw1 map. (If you ever played gw1. Theres spaceship crashed in the cave in Mineral Spring /Southern Shiverpeaks.)

Ah… no. There’s not. There is an overturned brazier, that the dwarves have in a few places, frozen into the ground. Is that what you’re remembering?

True, maybe, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do it. That site linked earlier has an EU guild recruitment section, and a quick look shows that eleven of the threads have been active in the last week. We happen to have more NA roleplayers on the English lore forums than EU, and it’s probably true that more EU players are on NA worlds than the other way around, but best I can tell the EU scene is still going along just fine.

On the timeline- while I agree with you on all the rest, Konig, and I’m generally against efforts to romanticize Abaddon, the timeline has gotten shifted around since those first sources. Quoting Angel’s follow-up on the interview that set off that toxicity storm:

> Humans (including Canthan humans) were brought to Tyria (from…no spoilers!). They are not native to Tyria and did not come with much magic of their own. From a human perspective and oral tradition (that can get warped over time), they say the gods were giving them magic, but the reality was that the dragons had gone back to sleep, and the gods felt it was safe to begin returning magic stored in the Bloodstone to Tyria. The gods (not only Abaddon) “unsealed” the Bloodstone and magic flowed back into the world. Humans and other sentient races of the time began using it.

> Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out. King Doric begged the gods to slow the flow of magic back into Tyria and the gods granted his wish by shattering the Bloodstone into pieces and limiting their use. Abaddon was annoyed by this.

That does leave considerably more time for a prolonged fall, which keeps us from conclusively ruling out that the fiasco over magic is what turned him bad.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Riannoc is honored, but he has no grave. No sylvari does, except one: Killeen, and that’s because she was buried by non-sylvari.

Not true. Evart was buried after he was killed by Bercilak, and while I don’t believe we ever heard if Riannoc’s body was technically recovered, the same sort of grave’stone’ is set up at the very spot he died on, where Iowerth goes to cast his ritual in Secrets in the Earth.

They may not have institutionalized it to the point of having graveyards- not yet- but there is precedent for the sylvari to bury their dead, and even to honor their final resting place.

Rhaegar.1203:

I just don’t see it. They knew about Elder Dragons, but not “regular” dragons?

I think he’s saying the opposite- Dragon’s Gullet is more likely proof that humans knew about regular dragons, not Elder Dragons.

Like you said, the discussion page is outdated. There are a few places it’s talked about, but this interview with a couple lore devs covers most of the basics- and it’s delivered as third-person omniscient Word of Dev, so there’s no need to worry about an outdated, specifically human bias mucking things up.

EDIT: In-game content has never covered all the lore, so you’re not going to see much about the schools there, but if you want a place they’re at least mentioned this book from Season 2 is a fine place to start.

The schools are one of the weirdest places where GW1 lore was changed for GW2, but the essence is this: the schools were very much a thing in the past, and not ‘just a human flourish’, but, as time went on and the dragons released more magic back into the world, it opened up options that weren’t as limited. This is over-simplifying things, and not exactly right, but for argument’s sake let’s say there’s two completely separate sources of magic to draw from- the bloodstones, which constrain you to only using one school, and the leaked magic from the dragons, which doesn’t. Back in GW1, there wasn’t as much leaked magic around, so to be a powerful spellcaster you had to use the bloodstone magic and accept their limitations. In GW2’s time, though, it’s reversed- the leaked magic is strong enough that anyone still tapping into the stones couldn’t keep up, and it doesn’t lock you into a school, so everyone’s using it now.

What all this means is… more or less what you guessed in the post. I don’t think the magic can be tapped into while it’s inside Lazarus, but since it wasn’t important anymore anyway it shouldn’t be a problem for us. I think you’re right about what it means for Lazarus, too- that it’d make him really strong in whatever field that stone was- although whether the devs decide that’s worth going into remains to be seen.

If a stone is destroyed, or if Lazarus is killed without something to take the power… theoretically, it wouldn’t do anything more than give a boost into the pool of leaked magic. However, since we’re starting to see that having too much magic in the system is bad, that’d likely cause unforeseen complications. For that reason, even if there wasn’t an explosion, I’m sure we’d need a replacement of some kind, be it a stone or a baby dragon.

@Inc whether killing Lazarus on another bloodstone would work really depends on if they have a maximum capacity or not. They’re already probably holding more magic than they were ever meant to. If there is an upper limit, trying to make one stone do the work of two overburdened stones would probably be a very bad idea.

Alternatively, if there isn’t and they just keep growing to compensate, you might just get a nice, safe mountain. Hard to guess right now.

Personally, my guess is that the Fountain doesn’t ‘stealth Chosenness’ so much as it allows the Mantle handlers to fake it. The detection mechanism the Eye uses is literally to knock any non-Chosen near it on their kitten , and that would get really old for the Eye’s escorts really fast.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

draxynnic.3719:

Actually, I think there was an indication from one of the traders outside the gate in Lion’s Arch pre-Scarlet that the leaders do look down on tengu leaving the Dominion – enough that they won’t necessarily be allowed back in.

The official trading posts and other tasks beyond the Wall that are approved by the Dominion are exceptions, but a tengu just up and leaving might be forfeiting his or her citizenship of the Dominion.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Yuki_Honestcrest

There was no such indication from tengu in LA.

Unless I’m way off base, drax was referring to Kae Mayumi.

That bit about the Whispers seems dodgy to me, but the Inquest’s, ah, retirement policy is sourced from one of the pre-launch lore blogs : “An asura never graduates from the Inquest, as they do from the other colleges of the asura. Once you join the megakrewe, you’re a member for life… even if the other Inquest members are forced to make sure that life is a necessarily short one.”

draxynnic.3719:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Wouldn’t need to be “rogue” at all, given that tengu are 100% allowed to go out on their own into the world. It’s that the tengu government has decided not to help out – they don’t ban their people from leaving.

In the personal story we meet 3 or so tengu who left the Dominion in order to help fight the Elder Dragons, and any one of them can function as our mentor figure. And we meet almost thrice as many who work as traders.

Actually, I think there was an indication from one of the traders outside the gate in Lion’s Arch pre-Scarlet that the leaders do look down on tengu leaving the Dominion – enough that they won’t necessarily be allowed back in.

The official trading posts and other tasks beyond the Wall that are approved by the Dominion are exceptions, but a tengu just up and leaving might be forfeiting his or her citizenship of the Dominion.

That was a self-professed ‘lapsed’ tengu, though- he even admits that he doesn’t speak the same language as them. I don’t think we can read anything into it beyond that the Dominion tengu identify as something more than only a race.

Nightbringer Tenchi.5794:

In the beginning we know that the 6 gods that came to Tyria where(in no particular order); Dwayna, Balthazar, Melandru, Lyssa, Dhuum and Abaddon.

I know this is nitpicking, but we’ve oddly never seen Dhuum counted among the Six, even in the earliest documents. It’s a very long shot, but if we’re talking about what we know, it is possible he was a seperate deal entirely, perhaps even native to Tyria or some completely separate world, until Grenth overthrew him.

Grenth was a demigod born of Dwayna and an Orrian Sculptor(clearly not Melchor),

Much to the contrary, everything we currently know points to Malchor being Grenth’s father, particularly since the devs specifically retconned out the reference to Malchor carving Grenth’s statue.

i have reason to believe that Tyria is Melandru’s domain(like the Fissure of Woe is to Balth) and that the Sylvari are actually new servants of hers, even though it seems lore states they are Mordremoth, i don’t buy it. not yet anyway.

I’d be curious to hear it, especially since you seem to say your reasons supersede stated lore.

As for your theories on the gods in general- obviously, we haven’t talked to them to know one way or another (and doubtless even then some might not take them at their word), but it seems to me you’re rather cynical about the whole thing. Dwayna was only nice because she wanted to be a housewife? Balthazar was just looking for cannon fodder? I feel like you’re selling both the gods and the humans short there, by aiming for the simplest and shallowest possible answers.

maxwelgm.4315:

it seems inevitable that it will eventually grow up to this critical and unstable point.

To expand on Konig’s answer above, we essentially know that the stones were able to handle the magic that the dragons naturally let back out into Tyria- depending on exactly how fast they lap up magic compared to how fast they release it while they sleep, we were already close to or maybe even past peak levels. It’s only after a couple of the dragons have died, releasing magic that the seers had never counted on leaving the system, and after the White Mantle had deliberately sabotaged the shell containing the power that we saw an explosion. Remember, as far as anyone knows, an Elder Dragon has never died before. Either the previous races had no reason to believe it could be done, and so no reason or way to account for the release of their power, OR they knew better than to kill them, in which case they may have safely assumed that whoever would be around this cycle would know better too.

We’ve already got a Menzies question, so I’ll leave the list be, but quick reminder- even if the devs come back to this thread, they’ve already laid down that they won’t talk about future story lines. Not even to say what they won’t be addressing. They feel like narrowing the field of speculation for players steals something from the experience.

Nightbringer Tenchi.5794:

it breaks the lore because now you have Tengu fighting against Zhaitan and Mordremoth when they largely chose to stay out of the matter. it makes much more sense to have Largos or Kodan as new playable races

… you mean as much sense as having revenants playing through the launch content? ANet already proved that argument doesn’t hold weight with them.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

On a side note: what does anyone think of the fact the three Inquisitors have the same names as some of the WiK members from gw1. Could they have tapped into the power of the bloodstone and be the originals or is it simply a case of reusing names to throw a bone to gw1 lore fans.

On the Journal Writers: They’re not all Inquisitors – in fact, none is. One’s an apprentice, one’s a justiciar, and one’s a “Grand Savant”. In GW1, respectively to name they were a justiciar, an Inquisitor, and a… ranger not scholar. So it’s beyond unlikely that they’re the same, unless they got mind wiped and demoted in rank. Most likely Anet just took the names as references to GW1.

That’s pretty much confirmed in Justiciar Bauer’s case- the flavor text for that achievement says he’s the ninth of his name.

Bazompora.2635:

Guys, does the wiki override press releases by Arenanet?

Under Glint’s instructions, roughly 300 years ago the Forgotten sought out human volunteers who shared their reverence for Glint’s dream of securing a peaceful future. After a rigorous set of tests and trials, the most worthy of these volunteers underwent a ritual that converted their bodies into pure magical energy which were then encased in golden metal armor. From this point forward, they were known as the Exalted.

Of course not, but in-game text does. And in the game text, they specifically reference several events that occurred during or after GW1 as being in the past- the Elder Dragons beginning to stir and the Brotherhood of the Dwarves passing their charge to the Zephyrites are both mentioned here, and that Rata Novus, the city founded by Zinn after the War in Kryta, was were their allies is a plot point here. All of this was before they went dormant, which means no, the mursaat and Saul couldn’t have stumbled on it.

Bazompora.2635:

Is it not possible that the golden city Saul saw in the Maguuma was Tarir,
occupied by the Mursaat while the Exalted were dormant?

No. Tarir was founded after the events of GW1- after Saul stumbled on the mursaat, and indeed, after the mursaat were wiped out.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Taimi is considered a genius even by individuals most consider a genius (Zojja), and iirc we meet her when she’s eight (so by now she’d be… ten? eleven?)

I would’ve sworn I read somewhere that she’s fourteen. I’ll poke around and edit the post if I find anything.

The important thing, though, is that she’s definitely in the double digits and still using a progeny model. Those young looking asura might be older than you’d think.

EDIT: That was quick. According to the wiki, the livestream after her introduction established that she was born in 1314, which’d make her about fifteen now. The vod is no longer available (of course) but when the wiki cites something directly it’s usually reliable.

I think I get what you mean, Jaken- not so much that they were rushing too quick to get to the next thing, but that it really felt like they were rushing to put the HoT story behind them. I ended up with something of the same feeling. Part of it, I think, was an inevitable result of how many loose threads they had to resolve with only a minimum amount of time for each, part of it was how none of the other threads that would’ve required more attention got touched on at all*, and the biggest part was how the three major plot strands going on from HoT- the losses of the Pact, the egg, and the results of Mordremoth’s death- barely got a look in edge-wise this episode, although I do believe they’ll be coming in later. I wouldn’t say it’s a deliberate pacing choice, per se, so much as a return to the problems of narrow scope. When there’s so little for you to do except move forward, you’re going to move much more quickly. I’m worried that this is going to show itself to be a recurring theme of the quality-foremost approach.

*While I did largely enjoy this patch, this second problem was the greatest disappointment. Maybe it shouldn’t have been; we were afraid going in that this would happen. ArenaNet’s long taken the stance of “we don’t want to do it if we can’t do it justice,” and there is some merit to that, but it also stands to reason that something is preferable to nothing. If it were a matter of waiting for the future time they did work in the resources to ‘do justice’, that be one thing, but when it’s a choice between glossing over a major briefly or never touching on that issue at all, that’s different. It’s very hard to see why the story’d ever cycle back around to how Mordremoth, the Dream, and most importantly the Nightmare Court relate to each other (and what about the Soundless! Remember how they were a big deal back before the expansion hit?), and Malyck and his Tree are in the same spot absent some impressive shoehorning. It’s also very clear that the company won’t allocate the resources to ‘do justice’ outside of the main thrusts of their game modes. The start of Season 3 seems to have been their last chance to tackle these issues, but it’s already jumped ahead to us getting swept up in the next big, unrelated thing. It would seem that just leaves raids (because Fractals certainly wouldn’t suffice) and you’ll understand if I’m not too excited about that.

Jaken.6801:

My problem is more along the fact, that he was appearently high ranking, controling a lot of the white mantle, but ended up not knowing about these plans?

He did know, is the thing. He was mislead about how many resources were being allocated to it, sure, but the justiciar’s journal does say “Knowing the confessor’s priorities, I emphasized the potential weaponization of the bloodstone’s power and mentioned Operation Rebirth as only a secondary objective.”

I think he just didn’t expect it to succeed. And why should he? It took them four years to make any kind of weapon, and even that was just powering up a few jade armors seemingly by accident. The idea that the same team could restore an almost-dead god must’ve seemed laughable.

. That he bought his rank and thought he was in charge.

I don’t think that’s in the cards. Xera was revealed to have a fair deal of sway, but again, the justiciar’s journals- the highest ranking cultist at the Bloodstone- showed a great deal of respect for Caudecus, an unwillingness to make big choices without his approval, even a share of his fervor for retaking Kryta. I think it’s more that there’s a smidgen less religious fervor in the Mantle than there’d used to be. It makes sense- their cult in GW1 was based on having present, active, demonstrably powerful gods, in opposition to those no-show Five/Six/ Since then? Their religion’s been focused on a single, inactive god on the verge of death. A waning of the faith among those privy to that information is the least they could’ve expected.

Might’ve been an availability thing? It sounded in the reddit AMA like they thought to include Hablion after the major story elements were already set, so maybe Blum had already been in and out to do Rytlock’s part.

The problem with this sort of question is that is has us speculating on potentially hundreds of unknown factors that go into their company decisions, most of which we don’t even know exist unless they pull back the curtains for us. Even if someone does stumble on the reason, it’s like hitting a bullseye blindfolded… and then not being able to take the blindfold off to find out.

The tour guide for Rurikton mentions her.

The way I see it, we have two possibilities here- the elder Lady Wi is disguising her appearance and voice, but the storywriters wanted us to know who she is, but added a first name that we didn’t know because… I feel like the line of logic falls apart there. Or, this really is the daughter.

It isn’t surprising that she’d be a mesmer too- we had that interview ages back that established most humans learn magic in the home. Her showing up with the White Mantle is convoluted, but no more so than the elder Wi doing so- the younger could just as easily be a spy, or (although I find the prospect less likely) be an honest Mantle zealot who her mother never thought to suspect. We know Caudecus is a canny old fox, despite his rather crass treatment of those he has no need to manipulate, and he might’ve clued on that Wi was more than she seemed and worked to subvert someone inside the family (or it might’ve just suited his fancy to turn the daughter of one of his enemy’s closest allies into his own mistreated accomplice).

Either way, like most of that final sequence, I think it was intended to keep us buzzing about possibilities until the next release. If nothing else it probably means that the politics of Divinity’s Reach haven’t been fully written off after all.

I put your question on the list, adormtil, since what I’m about to say is more inference and pattern than established lore, but our current understanding is this- after a cataclysmic ‘breakout’ period where they awaken and establish the core of their territories, the dragons seem to largely settle in for what you might consider passive consumption, not doing much of anything personally and allowing their minions and corruption to slowly spread on their own along the borders of that territory. They will from time to time throw together an invasion force to strike at settlements beyond their territory, sometimes lead by a much stronger minion- the attack on Claw Island was an example of this, and the Claw (or Claws) of Jormag harrying the kodan south might be considered in a similar light- but for the fairly long gaps between attacks, a dragon might be considered ‘inactive’ in the sense that it’s not doing much that we can see.

It’s a minor matter, but some interesting timeline notes- everything here is pulled directly from the three journals you compile for the sentient anomaly. Note that the journals do have their own oddities- like the apprentice forecasting the bloodstone would explode ‘in a matter of days’ close to a year before it did. Still, there was nothing directly contradictory in them, and I’m willing to work with the dates.

Zhaitan’s death- ‘just days’ before 60 Zephyr, 1326. This would indicate the events of the original Personal Story weren’t fully contained in 1325, and that either early S1 wasn’t held retroactively to the calendar synchronization, or that it overlapped the Personal Story.

Heart of Thorns- From the Pact’s Fleet’s disaster to Mordremoth’s death, we’re looking at 30-74 Zephyr, 1328. That sets the span of the story at 44 days. (Side note- it may be that the final date wasn’t the time of Mordremoth’s death, but just the first time any of the three had bothered to write about the results. Without the same definite markers that the previous entries had, absolute certainty is unattainable. It is worth acknowledging the possibility.)

Forsaken Thicket- 13 Zephyr, 1329. The date is only attached to the events of Salvation Pass, in particular, but the journals speak of the entire raid as a single event, so that, coupled with the next point, is sufficient reason to believe the gaps between the wings were minimal. Also, it’s now official that we’re in 1329.

Season 3- By 17 Zephyr, 1329, the last date in the books, the events of Stronghold of the Faithful had occurred and the orders that inadvertently resulted in the Bloodstone’s detonation had been issued. We can safely assume that we’re very close to that date now, and that the calendar synchronization has been definitely abandoned for this season.

So that leaves us in an interesting place- perhaps as little as a week after the events of the raid, but close to a year after Mordremoth’s death. The latter bears the more unexpected implications, but it’s late enough to be early here, so I’ll leave those to you for now.

It’s interesting. We’d already killed someone in his position in the PS, which is why I didn’t think the twist would happen. But now it seems like the Mantle might have splintered a bit. Maybe it actually got so bad there were two at once.