Guild Wars 2

Let me add to Konig’s post.
There’s a lot of bugs concerning the Personal Story that don’t get fixed UNLESS they hinder progress completely. That’d make it immediately high priority.

Story on the other hand?
If you’ve ever wanted to read Forgal’s note after the Battle of Claw Island or speak to Steward Gixx or Ogden who are also vital to the story I’ve got bad news for you.

Wow, searching for a golden thread in this discussion is making me a little dizzy so I’m not planning on getting too deeply involved.
But for the love of the Six, here’s the part of the Dolyak Express Q&A concerning their current whereabouts.

Q: Are the Six [gods] really gone or not? Their power is still very much present. Players can call upon the gods’ power with prayers, NPC priests can summon Reapers of Grenth etc., and their statues are still stuffed with energy. So if they left, why are their power still here?
Jeff Grubb: The human gods still exist, and their power is still felt within Tyria. However, they have pulled back into the mists, leaving the humans to stand (or fall) on their own merits. There has been a tendency for the human gods to, um, meddle with their worshippers a bit much, and in the wake of the final battle of Abaddon, they have been trying to cut back. Also, the destruction of the big A and his replacement with Kormir in the Pantheon resolved one of their ties with physical contact with Tyria. So there are ties, but you just can’t ring them up to take on the Elder Dragons.

The oldest mention of Zhaitan’s name was discovered in dwarven records by the Priory IIRC. A npc in Malchor’s leap mentions that.
Also his minions constantly call him by this name, so maybe he named himself and the dwarves took note of it. Or maybe he adopted the name.

Primordus was named by dwarves to my knowledge too.
Kralk’s name was given to us by Glint.
Jormag I forgot. Woops.

Mordremoth we don’t know yet.
The DSD most likely does have a name, we just haven’t found any records on it yet or heard anyone refer to it. It could have an arabic name if the Largos decided to name it or maybe it has been given a name by the krait (something with ss?).

Or maybe one of the ancient races named the DSD and Mord but we just haven’t stumbled upon any records mentioning these names yet. Mord’s name we only know as players because of Subject Alpha’s move anyway. ;P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To draw the dragon, Snaff had to become the eye of the storm – to be what Kralkatorrik was not.
Where the dragon was fury, Snaff had to become bliss.
Where the dragon was rage, Snaff had to be delight.
Where the dragon was ancient and bloodthirsty and voracious, Snaff had to be new and altruistic and quite content, thank you very much.

On a random note, this bit kinda reminds of the Dream and Sylvari… heh.

Braille? :P /badumtsh

Ok but seriously speaking, Dredge have underdeveloped eyes and are not completely blind. They’re only near-blind.

After all, they do take pride in how pretty their teeth are

bullyrook.2165:

I am well aware of the blog post, Konig, I just find it hard to believe that a species that cannot be credited with some form of supernatural corruption (like the orc/elf dynamic) can be totally evil and black hearted. If that were the case, that would be grounds for their genocide – depressing, right? How would you like that for an in-game achievement title? “Extinction Specialist” doesn’t sound like it has much going for it.

And I would really like the devs to avoid going the Charr route and having these “good” Krait reject their religion outright. Maybe just reveal an Oratuss that has a different perspective on their scriptures. That would be nice

Well the thing is, their utter black-heartedness and arrogance is well-founded on the fact that they lived in almost complete isolation since ancient times. They had contact with unfortunate sailors, Largos and possibly Karka and that’s all we know about. Until their exodus they didn’t even have much contact with Quaggans. They were led to believe that they’re above all other races and back then rightfully so. The blog outright states that they were top-dogs in the unending ocean.

It has been merely 50 years since they were forced into shallow waters and according to Ela Makkay, they’ve mostly kept to themselves and we kinda see that. Except for raiding and attacking their immediate surroundings in their territory, they don’t seem to expand. During the ToN-arc with the spore-off shots, it was even noted how unusual it was to see krait in the other areas.

They’re still trying to live with the same mentality as back then and it’s not going well for them so… give it some more time and then we’ll see whether they’ll take the centaur route or get over their religion-fueled superiority complex. :P

Krait society is evil, fanatic and the Oratuss are more than likely doing their best to keep the invisible walls around it up to ensure themselves power over their people. But at the same time, their society is also ridiculously fragile. Think about it – The Oratuss are the pillar and the top of their culture and society at the same time. The Toxic Alliance was the first crack in it, led by Oratuss who had another view then the other ones.

It’s possible we’ll start to see krait doubting their leaders in future buuuuuuut… It’s also totally possible that the other krait Oratuss point with their finger at the Toxic Alliance and be like “Look at these heretics worshipping a false prophet, this is exactly why you should never ally with land-dwellers!” to tighten their grip on their people even further. I think anything else about why we haven’t encountered any non-evil krait so far has been said by the others andmypostisgettinglong.

Personally, if there were to be krait breaking away from the doctrine of their priesthood I’d prefer it if they didn’t reject their religion but merely their leaders so they don’t turn into Mk. II-Charr. Like ‘fine the priests falsified a lot but there has to be some truth about our prophets and we’ll find it!". :P

Mara.6782:

I got over 10 krait ally

Summoning krait from the other world? Weibe confirmed for krait prophet!

Kralk for me, I dig deserts, I dig crystals, I dig the crystal desert and the branded look rad. Gotta love the twisted look of the Dragonbrand too. Branded are also less of a pain to fight …unlike Destroyers. /tiny harpy screech.

Then the DSD because I really like the mystery around it, I love underwater sections and places and you can never have enough krait lore. Oh and a bit more about the Largos but mystery suits them fine for the time being. Exploring abandoned underwater cities of these two races? Just yes please.

Then Jormag, I’m really looking forward to it bringing some more Norn and Kodan lore to the game. Also I love his way of corruption and I love how it goes from promises of power to twisting its followers into grotesque stuff like Icebrood Colossi. Like woah, how many times did I have to remind myself that these were NORN? That’s freaking horrifying. And awesome.

Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. There’s probably just a typo in the coding because both scenarios make rather little sense like you said yourself. And the first time I played through either of those missions, there definitely were no krait. No clue how Anet codes their stuff but it’s possible that what Weibe was supposed to summoned happened to be a single digit away from the Vet krait and the Risen might have similar codes to the living ones.

Or maybe krait aren’t actually the snake-folks we see but parasitic lifeforms from the depths of the ocean that turn everything into the snakes we know as krait. And soon, everything shall turn into lion men krait! Bwahahahahaha! /saturday cartoon outro

^^
About the summoned krait-NPC, most likely a bug.

Another example is the Forging the Pact one in Timberline, when you save the explorers from the Risen Assault lead by Dhuzdin what’s-his-Wraith-face. It spawns two Veteran Krait Damoss (with knockback and minion summoning, ow!) for no reason. I’m pretty sure those were supposed to be Risen krait, but it spawned living ones instead.

This also happens in the PS in the Straits of Devastation with the quest with the ship and the ghostfire charges. It spawns some living krait guarding the mines although there are no living ones in the entire zone.

So I’d dismiss it as a bug somewhere in the database with the Vet-versions of Krait being spawned instead of other creatures.

A visual analogy to character deaths in Guild Wars.

(Bwahaha yes it’s a Megaman-insider but I feel it’s so relevant :p Sums up everything I wanted to post, haha)

omg it’s like the Machiavelli-topic all over again /holds head

BeenholdingmyselfouttathisthreadforawhilebutIfeelliketheissueisabitoutsideoflore.
First off I agree that the Pact isn’t Tyria’s super police.

But I think the fault lies with the presentation and writing. Example:

As pact, the 3 orders need the support of ALL of Tyria.
Imagine if the Vigil requested an airship from the pact for themselves to idk safely relocate Quaggan-refugees.
1. Not only would it possibly put a dent in the trust of the other orders and supporters towards them
2. it has nothing to do with dragons, so the 3 legions, Rata sum and other forces would pull the logistics-plug.
3. They need to rebuild their defenses before they get overwhelmed by dragon forces and at the same time recover for the next offense.

Meanwhile… Scarlet.
1. Where the pact needs all support it can get, she just kittens air ships. We raided an airship factory and never saw anything remotely resembling an inconvenience for her. It even appears as if she has had more airships and more advanced technology than the pact itself.
2. Although some of her forces are splinter factions or even splinter-factions of splinter factions, it seems like an endless supply of meatshields. That is taking into account that events occur once. Obviously also a gameplay factor, but it stretches the suspension of disbelief.

tl dr; Problem, the pact has to take logistics into consideration in lore. Scarlet hasn’t, at least never visibly. Which leaves us with “but Scarlet was a huge threat!! Wth pact??”

/takes out manual on krait – I mean.

Personally I wouldn’t be too worried about them. Three things:

a) Krait multiply ridiculously, kinda like Hylek. Go to the lair of the blood witch in Kessex and approach one of those ten-thousand spheres on the ground that are guarded by an unnamed environmental effect. Yep, those are all krait eggs.
Of course one can argue that we don’t know how long their weak and helpless larval stage lasts.

b) We really don’t know where the krait are from exactly – and as such, we don’t know if they all headed to Tyria or whether they escaped south, east and west from Bubbles as well. So there could be krait on other continents too, heck even some unexplored ones.

c) Questionable whether they’d all kill the krait or only cull their numbers. Difficult to say because the game is riding on it’s teen-rating like it’s some kind of bible and avoids our characters being morally ambiguous at all costs. And krait just push for that with their evil-evil status.
As example, Caderyn’s story. Killing krait children goes against Ventari’s teachings. So most of the Sylvari wouldn’t do that. Similarly, not everyone would see that as the right thing to do.
Then again we kinda wiped out an entire city that definitely had hatcheries off-screen without anyone raising a single eyebrow and Trahearne even boasting about it. >???

Tho with the possibility of a krait civil war thanks to the toxic alliance which might or might not shatter their faith in their leadership, I’d say everything’s possible, no matter how unlikely. It’s a rather exciting situation, hehe.

And I didn’t say that Zhaitan forced them out of their homes or that you said that. That’s wrong anyway.
I said they passed Zhaitan’s territory when fleeing from the DSD and dealt with Risen before on their way to Tyria. That negates the idea that the krait in Caledon aren’t aware of losses caused by Risen just because they’re ‘stuck in a zone/time before that’. Because what I said actually happened long before the zone takes place.

Neither did I say that Zhaitan himself isn’t a threat – I said the krait don’t view him as one whereas they saw the DSD as threat. And so do the Largos.
Their delusional zealot-mentality aside, the krait might not view Zhaitan as threat because the price they pay is acceptable or maybe even a joke compared to dealing with Bubbles.

1. The zones aren’t necessarily locked in time, though the lore/gameplay distinction is something that deserves its own thread IMO. I think discussing that would completely derail this poor topic. P:

2. Zhaitan awoke 100 years ago. The krait left their homes 50 years ago. We know for certain that the Strait of Malchor was completely controlled by him. I think it’s rather safe to assume that the krait had to fight through Zhaitan’s forces on their exodus, which means zones or not they already had to deal with the Risen.
If they had found the Risen to be worse than the DSD’s minions they could have pulled a 180° turn right there. But they didn’t though they certainly had causalities due to Risen on their way to the shallow waters. So it’s not like they’re completely oblivious to the Risen’s existence or ability to corrupt them.

3. Mt. Maelstrom has this rather awkward example because it also coincides with the PS. But it’s all in one zone. Regardless of whether they had the krait orb during the time this heart takes place or not, there’s the one where you have to take a Risen-illusion to force the krait to fight the Risen. The Risen are already /there/ but downright ignored by the krait until you trick them.
The mail for the quest says:
“The krait are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Risen. Your trickery and misdirection has convinced the snakes that their enemy is the Risen, not us. At this rate, conflict between the two forces is imminent. Good work!”
Then in the same place there’s an event where you help a Largos apprentice defeating a risen krait witch with more undead krait along the way, so it’s not like the krait in this area aren’t affected by the corruption themselves.

Even if they had the krait orb, all it does is prevent corruption – it doesn’t prevent Risen from attacking them. They seemingly just don’t care about the Risen as threat nor the causalities they cause among them.

They died and became Risen …and the rest of the krait still doesn’t care. That’s the point. They’re displaying total apathy towards Zhaitan, though we don’t know how they view the rest of the dragons.

Bubbles displaced them in an exodus that could rival the norn’s and they left behind what they valued the most. There was no “lets just sacrifice some whatever and see what happens, can I has prophets pls-thumb twiddling” like they’re doing it now.
If they feared Zhaitan anywhere as much as the DSD, they wouldn’t do that.
The way they act, Zhaitan’s a much lesser evil, one they can afford waiting through until ‘their prophets arrive’.

One day “I could outrun a centaur” will be nothing but an ancient proverb at this rate. /sheds tear

Though since the dwarves were mentioned… what about the Jotun and the Forgotten?
I’ve been wondering about Giants too.

@Rainbow Sprint

Uhhhm there’s never been any indication that there’s more than one orb in their possession or that more than one exist. If they had a reserve of anti-dragon orbs in their territory Sayeh would probably have mentioned that. And it’s only the Krait in Mt. Maelstrom and Nonmoa lake that had access to it to our knowledge. (Though it’d make sense if the deeps in Terzetto Bay shared it as well. Wth was up with that place. <_>)

The Sparkfly fen ones have undead and even had Tequatl at their doorstep and didn’t care. The Caledon Forest krait live close to undead as well. And every other settlement seems not to give a crap about the threat of dragons as whole and instead continue with their merry sacrificing.

Bubbles forced them out of their homes and they abandoned their most sacred monuments in doing so. Means they acknowledged Bubbles as threat. You’d think if they started feeling cornered and threatened by Zhaitan since there’s nowhere else to go, they’d slowly start to get over their superiority complex… But somehow that doesn’t seem to be the case.
That the Largos don’t care much about Risen nor actively fight them but refer to what’s down there as horrors makes it seem like they share the sentiment towards dragons.

And Jormag I’d place second after Bubbles. Shattering the Shiverpeaks aside, no one even managed to scratch its fang since Aesgeir. Dat popsicle.

Hylek doing well? Wut. With the exception of a very few evil tribes, most of them are either terrorized by krait (Caledon, Metrica), at the brink of starvation (Kessex), targeted by the Inquest (Mt. Maelstrom) or threatened by Risen (Bloodtide Coast, Sparkfly fen). Also while they lay many eggs, not that many hylek actually make it to adulthood according to their blog. I’d say the number of their young and tribe mentality actually work against them because they can’t support themselves in situations like those.

The Kodan were hit hard but I don’t see them anywhere near extinction.

Quaggan would be near extinct …if not everyone and their mother rushed for their help. Cough, what. :P

Then again, I see the centaurs walking down a long and lonely road towards extinction. At least the ones in Tyria. I think a dev said that they cannot capitulate and that they have nowhere else to go, so it’s a long drawn-out losing battle for them which Outcast Quindova also alludes to.

My guess is on Bubbles too.

Sayeh initially didn’t care at all about the Risen and the krait orb’s effect against them until the Commander proved themselves to her. If it wasn’t for Trahearne she might have not cared ever about what Zhaitan’s doing.
Then there’s also Master Sdias, a Largos NPC in Mt. Maelstrom who tells us we’re not ready for the horrors of their former home.
(He also says that the Largos only recently traveled to Tyria, so whether some stayed back isn’t sure.)

Even the krait didn’t care that much about the Risen but they /did/ flee from Bubbles.
And their obelisk asides, there could possibly be more magical artifacts down there we don’t know about like the blue orb. Sayeh stated it was found in the deeps by the krait and that it is known to deep dwellers only.
Bubbles also may have an army of corrupted krait, karka, largos, quaggan and leviathans and whatever else didn’t make it out. Dragons usually don’t wake up without corrupting everything around them.

Fear the bubble-blood-bath!

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Aight. I’m behind pretty much everything the OP summarized but personally the most important to me are the following:

1. Show, don’t tell. The interviews and information outside of the game are a byproduct of this problem. We have been told Scarlet’s this and that and that. We are told the alliances still follow her because of this and that reason. We have to be told a bajillion things because they don’t fit into the releases due to lack of time, resources or what-have-you.

Problems this causes: Cheapens the feeling of the plot by a lot, leaves potential plotholes, important parts of the plot are easily missed and difficult to track if they are explained or lampshaded outside of the game. They’re also possibly lost forever if they’re on some 3rd party site or the forum (while at it, hint hint the lore forum needs some mod-love, care and stickies)

2. Enemy Lieutenants are allowed to be fleshed out too. Like the OP post says, they can facilitate the plot, be used to explain plotholes, show some of the main enemy’s personality via the big bad’s influence on them and the lieutenants stance towards them – and le gasp, they can be enjoyable characters!
Inb4 Mai Trin, yes Mai Trin had a name. And she was afraid of Scarlet. That’s it. The only memorable thing about her is that she had a name at all, her own boss battle and she was scared of Scarlet (and had outdated text for over half a year). You could have put the Aetherblade Admiral in her place and the difference would have been trivial at best. A good character, foe or friend cannot be easily replaced. And her fear of Scarlet was weak and shallow – keep in mind, if you use a lieutenant to highlight something about a big bad, it should be something the players can get behind emotionally and understand.

3. Marketing. I didn’t see anyone else mention this but uhh… trying not to be rude here, but please keep a leash on your marketing team? The way they present the LS actually puts a huge dent in it, really. Sometimes the hype is way too much but then from the players’ perspective it’s completely unfounded.
In the worst case, it’s also insulting or downright misleading.
Remember when Scarlet was foreshadowed as “a mysterious force behind this new alliance” in the ToN-release? That was really inappropriate and I’m certain more than a few people read that and wondered again what the age of the target group was supposed to be.
Then you’ve got statements that blow things out of proportion. “Rock Tyria to its core, change its face forever in a final confrontation” or what was it.

Changing lion’s arch’s twice for these releases? Probably tons of work from dev-perspective and a huge feat.
A player reading “Tyria’s face being changed forever” and /merely/ sees Lion’s Arch changed? Disappointment doesn’t scratch it.

The LS is a learning experience for the devs and yes it’s a business. But sell it for what it is.
A good example of hype done right is the feature pack I’d say. It lives up to and even beats our expectations in some regards. And that makes players even happier. It’s not perfect yet (see town-clothes stuff) but it’s been hyped for exactly what it is and that’s among other things why we love it already and are looking forward to it.

And… oh yeah, sorry that turned out long. I hope that’s helpful. P:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

I mean we are told the EDs view each other as enemies

False. What we were told is “they are not allied.” This doesn’t mean they’re enemies, it just means they don’t work together.

Though Captain Whiting in Sea of Sorrows does say “this is the time of the Elder Dragons” (paraphrased) so it wouldn’t be odd to consider them as friendly-but-not-allied. The closest to “they’re enemies” we get is if the minions cross each others’ paths, they fight. But given that the Elder Dragons don’t care much on what they do (see here – Jormag doesn’t care that Sons of Svanir kill his female norn icebrood), this doesn’t account to much in regards to hostility between Elder Dragons.

I guess ‘rivals’ would have been the better choice of words with what I wanted to say. Poor choice of words on my part. I meant not that that they hunted down each other because we know they don’t, but simply in that some clashed before and got killed when the EDs first ‘marked’ and established their territories.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Though I do want to see a battle between two dragon champions.

At least one thing we can agree 100% on. ;D

This is a very interesting read Tamias! Also thanks to Konig for adding to it, I really didn’t know about the interview that also included Rotscale. (Also a nice theory btw!)

All that gave me some ideas I didn’t quite consider before, so here’s some food for thoughts: What if some EDs already killed other ones in the past? I mean we are told the EDs view each other as enemies, so why shouldn’t there have been any that got wiped out in confrontations. We already have living EDs without records, so in addition to this number there’s a good possibility that what we currently know of really IS a small fraction of Elder dragons that existed.
Also possible: What if Kuuvanang is a left-over lieutenant of a possibly benevolent ED that was killed a long time ago by another ED?

Though whether we’ll see things about in Cantha in the LS? It’s been 2 years for us to go towards the West of Tyria now. Then there’s the Far Shiverpeaks, the Isles of Janthir, the Blood Legion homelands, The Ring of Fire, The Unending Ocean, The Deldrimor front, Scavenger’s Causeaway and the Crystal Desert which also developed Half-life 3 status.
Even if Anet went zig-zag deciding to go to Cantha before uncovering half of continental Tyria, it’d be years from now. At least that’s what my intuition tells me, I’d be happy to be wrong.

@Konig des Todes

Good point with the other possibilities.

Tho the vast difference between Scarlet’s “artistic abilities” (for a lack of better terms) doesn’t quite answer the question as to why she’d draw a dragon on the ceiling of her lair as part of her plan. Her schematics and other sketches had a purpose in her plan – and anything that didn’t pointed to her past, nightmares and vision.

Tho if it happened to be a conveniently placed grawl-painting that had nothing to do with her, it’d point us back to the red-herring deal.

And the reason I found the dat peculiar is because it was patched into the client on 4th February with EoTM. So before it was taken out again, it still linked to and built up on the content of Origins of Madness.
I’m taking it with a grain of salt, but until the next season there’s no say whether the plot is still the same and they merely changed the finale or if they decided at this point to completely change the direction of the LS-plot itself. So I’m not dismissing it completely (yet).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

As for whether Scarlet intended one dragon or more – seems like it was supposed to lead to Mordremoth (see: the datamined reddit stuff floating around) but then Anet took a turn with the story midway and changed it and now it could lead to Mordremoth and and whatever other dragon they want to, tho the thumpers in the north could be a hint to Jormag.

To me, the datamined stuff never led to Mordremoth being the end-goal of Scarlet. No more than what we presently got, at least. It was just the last she did was wake up Mordremoth.

Emphasis on seems.
The datamined dialogue on reddit hints to Scarlet revealing Mord’s name. Then there’s this bit by Braham and Taimi.

Taimi What do you know about Mordremoth?
Braham I know it’s connected to the jungle.
Taimi It’ll be a serious threat to everyone now that it’s awake.
Taimi And its corruption will spread.
Braham Hm. All the more reason to put it down.

One one hand, yes dragon corruption spreads that’s what it naturally does. On the other hand it could also mean that something/someone already was corrupted by Mord. That could have been Scarlet because past Jory’s cut-out death apparently everything went the same as in our version which again would explain Scarlet’s weird looks in the cutscene.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

Unless the dragon painting that accompanied the journal about the entity was a giant red herring, I’d keep my hopes concerning good old Laz’ being the entity low…unless…
…Lazarus got corrupted by Mordremoth! (Plot-twist!)

There was more in the lair than just the journal and dragon motif, however. There was the marionette and drill schematics, things related to the Tower of Nightmares and the Fervid Censor spores, and of course the map of probes.

Why must the dragon motif be related solely to the journal and not anything else in the lair or just Scarlet in general (e.g., steps in her goal)?

On one hand we had parts of her plans (mini probe, plans for the drill, alliance sheet and so on). But! We also had drawings in her lair. Remember the crudely drawn stuff in black and red that all seemed to link to her nightmares and her vision?
So why shouldn’t a huge drawing of a dragon relate to the other things she drew?
And what would be the point of doodling a dragon to the ceiling if it was a step towards her goal rather than something done in an episode of lunacy or whatever?

-

There’s also another interesting thing in the comment section of the reddit thread which both points to Mord not being her endgame and yet back to multiple dragons.
This bit by that_shaman in the comment section.

wait, did scarlet tell them about mordremoth or how did they get the name?
permalink
[–]that_shamanFlame Legion Cartographer[S] 6 points 2 days ago
Really no clue at all, she never mentions what she exactly was doing, only that it had to do with dragons being the new rulers of Tyria. Those are the lines that got leaked by the way, that’s why people knew about it being Mordremoth. So it’s quite random that the NPCs know the name of the dragon (or that it even that was a dragon)

Was the entity a dragon (champion)? Why would it support the other dragons ruling then? Or was it something else? Why would it want the dragons to rule if it took over Scarlet’s mind? How does ‘dragons’ ruling fit with bowing to a single new master which we got now? Could it still all link together? Could it really be Laz’ wanting the dragons to rule solely to get his revenge on all of Tyria? Keeping in mind that this was an alternate ending and we don’t know yet how much of it still is canon, this still leaves some good room for speculation.

webtoehobbit.4201:

I am totally with Konig here, until they definitively mention in game some things about Scarlet, you can’t just assume that what you “think” happened is lore, cause it’s not, this is not how the game can continue lore wise. ANet needs to start giving some answers and solid lore, not just speculation upon more speculation.

I totally second this from the bottom of my heart. I’m rather tired of the wishy-washy answers. They really need to stop with the speculation-game. Speculation should happen naturally as by-product of solid lore, not as method to leave the foundation of the plot up to player fantasy.

But to play the devil’s advocate the stupid murder-mystery theme they’ve given this LS season contributes a lot to these assumptions being taken as fact and the number of plot-twists has been close to nonexistent in all of GW2, pre-LS included.
So far most of the LS has really been “it’s probably the simplest answer, but there’s a chance it could be something else because ~insert mystery~. Oh surprise, it was the simple answer after all!”
So I’m also neither surprised nor can I really blame the players. Not that from a lore-standpoint I’m okay with assumptions being stated as fact, but from a writer’s POV there’s a huge issue in the presentation which fuels the cause of people doing that.

Anet’s fallen too much in love with making mysteries where no mystery needs to be. Or where no mystery should be. And on the other side they’re failing to put solid explanations ingame.

Unless the dragon painting that accompanied the journal about the entity was a giant red herring, I’d keep my hopes concerning good old Laz’ being the entity low…unless…
…Lazarus got corrupted by Mordremoth! (Plot-twist!)

That wouldn’t add up with the avoiding and surviving EDs-part tho unless Mordy tricked Scarlet into thinking Lazarus was above EDs when he’s just a champ and that’s kinda ‘too convoluted’.

Tho on the other hand, I really like the part of the theory about Omadd being Inquest. All in all a good read Konig.

Well, for one we don’t know what ideas were taken credit for and on which level we’re talking. If it’s rather general ideas like “identify leyline-network, amass an army, grow a giant weed-tower of doom, wipe out tyrians” and “breach a leyline intersection” it’d still make sense for Scarlet to argue that these ideas were hers, not Mord’s.
Of course it’d make less sense if the ideas were described more in detail, like build a giant drill, use sonic technology to locate leylines, etc.
But we don’t know so…yeah.

But well, here’s what I was putting together: Scarlet’s original plan was to have the Elder dragons rampage and have Tyria go up in flames and then reshape it, pretty much like you said Konig.

But the entity was Mordremoth. While Scarlet tried to use him as part of her plan, he has been trying to make her part of his plan. As the Pale Tree says, she was losing the battle for her mind.
Scarlet originally had an idea of how to defeat or bypass the Elder dragons (possibly recreating Thaumanova using a dragon itself perhaps?) after they’re done with their chaos so waking up Mordy was part of her plan anyway and that’s why the MA-Flame legion followed her. But then Mordremoth leads her to think that she’s doing exactly what he wants her to and while she’s struggling to do her own thing, she ends up doing exactly his bidding. So by the end she’s become Mordremoth’s marionette.

As for whether Scarlet intended one dragon or more – seems like it was supposed to lead to Mordremoth (see: the datamined reddit stuff floating around) but then Anet took a turn with the story midway and changed it and now it could lead to Mordremoth and and whatever other dragon they want to, tho the thumpers in the north could be a hint to Jormag.

So… at least that’s what I’m trying to make out of the LS and it still doesn’t seem right. While I’m glad that the ending was made less cheesy, on the other hand it shows that this might not be the first time things were rewritten in the middle of it. To be frank, the LS has become a fortnightly-“I hope next update explains the plotholes”.
There’s way too many loose leads and if anything, all the speculations I read and hear feel like desperate attempts at making sense out of the plot with hopes and wishes strung in and that’s kinda saddening in itself.
The plot really doesn’t seem over yet and there’s still ways for them to retroactively add to season 1 in season 2 and I really hope they do that.

Well, since there’s no say to how much buying these skills will cost and unlocking them for every alt might be repetitive and boring, here’s a random idea:

Lower the cost of the instant-skill unlock by 10% or 20% for every alt on that account.

Shiren.9532:

So the epilogue is here. What do you guys think? I don’t think any of these questions were answered.

I was gonna hold off with questions ’till the epilogue but well, here we are.

1. What’s the deal with Azurite? Why did the MA mine it?
2. Why did Scarlet try to put Mai Trin in LA before she was assured of the leylines’ existence there?
3. Why the heck was a leyline-probe in the Edge of the Mists? Are there leylines in the Mists too?
4. What’s with the renegade Nightmare Court faction? Do they even have a better explanation for joining Scarlet than ‘for the evulz’?
5. How did Peter survive the Miasma?
6. How did Scarlet get her hands on Obelisk Shards?
7. How and where the heck did Scarlet get the toxic pollen from in the first place?
8. How did Scarlet know that the Tower of Nightmares would spawn a fake-krait prophet?
9. Was the Marionette’s purpose really just to thin out ‘adventurers’?
10. How did Dessa isolate the Thaumanova-fractal and why can’t the procedure be repeated for other things? (like checking on dragons cough)
11. What is Caithe’s secret?
12. How did she build that giant mountain-sized drill in secret? The ToN was cloaked by the Nightmare Court, but we were told Scarlet kept her alliances separated so it’s rather unlikely that one alliance hid it while another helped building it…
13. What happened to the alliances? Did they all get wiped out during the siege or did parts of them flee under new leaderships?
14. How did the Priory find out about the leyline intersection AFTER Scarlet invaded?
15. How did the Order of Whispers enter the EoTM? Why didn’t they do anything with the intel about her planned ‘base’ there?
16. Whatever happened to Kari’s report about the Tower of Nightmares?
17. So why again didn’t the Pale Tree tell us about Scarlet when she first revealed herself?
18. Was the whole headache-inducing point of Scarlet absolving the 3 asuran colleges which was later corrected to special courses at the colleges only to have 3 fancy-themed colors associated with a buff and the power core-items? R e a l l y? (And then the colors were the wrong ones too!)
19. What WAS the tower of nightmares and how was it sentient? Was it and the hybrid a dragon champion after all?
20. Oh yeah. About that mysterious Mister E.

There’s prolly a few more but I can’t think of them from the top of my head…

Yesterday during guild missions there was an earthquake in Southsun cove. First time I experienced it, my screen wouldn’t stop shaking and there was a rumbling noise.

On the other hand it’s a volcanic island but… I feel like it could have been that.

Zhaitan caused a whole peninsula to rise (+ a tsunami), Kralk left us the brand, Jormag’s doing blizzard stuff up in the north and Primordus is rocking in the depths, Mordry better offers Tyria a world-changing intro as well!

Bringsthisback- I mean I think we’re in dire need of stickies. Mess doesn’t even start to describe the situation.
It’s the only sub-forum beside the forum-website one that has no sticky whatsoever.
I really don’t know where to post anymore because of the sheer number of duplicates. I might not be the only one so (cough) Anet might miss out on some delicious speculation (cough) which they love reading so much (cough cough).

I’d suggest stickies for
- List to major threads about the most common theories (Malyck, Sylvari-Dragon minions, general LS discussion-threads, is abaddon REALLY dead, 6 dragons = 6 Gods or whatever shows up regularly), basically what was said
- A thread with the story and Lore related dolyak-expresses. Also if possible, lore questions answered by devs in interviews (now THAT’s hard to compile but kitten the scattered lore-situation is really getting out of hand ) These should also cover some commonly asked questions. But that’s tons of work so for a start the Dolyak Expresses should suffice.
- …a netiquette? I know not too many people read them but it’s kind of a formality.

Can we at least have a heads-up by devs about making such threads sticky? Or in case the devs who lurk here don’t have any experience with forum tools, inform one of the forum mods to check? Prettypleasewithacherryontop?

I actually wanted to write something more well-thought out and so, but I’m a little too dumbfounded how the fanbase is suddenly turning Scarlet into a draco in leatherpants.

That’s ..actually also kind of a bad impression to give the writers since it implies that people are positively amazed with the quality of this writing when it’s actually still mediocre. I hope they continue pushing their limits instead of stopping just because their ‘expectations’ were met.

Anyways, I’m pretty sure the alliances will slowly die out one after another by the hands of players. There shouldn’t be too many left after LA. Emphasis on should. (how big are those armies anyway) The only one I can see sticking around for much longer than the others is the Aetherblades.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

So… Guess who has a twitter now

Xukavi.4320:

Well interesting tweet from Mordy: “I would have been sleeping now if you all didn’t ruin my minion’s plans. You are to blame for what is to come.”

wookalar.8952:

I find 3 things interesting on “Mordy’s” Twitter:

The Twitter account is not official.

Xukavi.4320:

From what I heard was that the Scarlet Briar account was actually backed by a dev (something I heard from forums so take it with a grain of salt). This would sorta lean towards Mordy also being backed by a dev.

Nope. Or at least not official. See above link.

Weird. They didn’t list the Lord Vanquish-twitter which we were told was dev-run.
And the Scarlet-account had a few screens that look rather hard to get from void-jumping alone. The one with the Aetherblade-ships was posted a day before Escape from Lion’s Arch went live. And IIRC void-jumping allowed you to see the inside of the drill, but not Scarlet herself.

Edit: Also can’t seem to find these particular screens elsewhere on news-sites. Reverse-google searching leads back to the twitter.

I’d be rather glad if the Mordy one is fake after all (now that a few accounts showed up that ARE fakes), but I’m positive that the Scarlet one has a connection to Anet.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

Also looks like story bits may occasionally land on flickr.

Oh dear. I hope they don’t do this frequently. That’s worse than on the main page!

…yep, I feel you there. sigh

So… Guess who has a twitter now

Also looks like story bits may occasionally land on flickr.

/leaves this here and stealths out

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This would mean, therefore, that Malyck and his tree – which hold no Dream of Dreams experience – can be corrupted.

Heh, that would give Malyck’s “Harbinger”-title an interesting new interpretation.

To make a meeting of those two groups work as heart or DE, we could also be given a krait disguise by an order of whispers-agent and join the krait taking out the toxic krait while still rescuing slaves behind their back. And it’d give us a chance to talk to them as well.
So, something along the lines of the Briarthorn Den in Caledon. Not the most creative solution since there’s already a similar heart quest, but it should do its job.
That way it’d take some steam off the perceived issue.

Angel McCoy.1832:

1. No really, what happened to their ability to shape-shift?

They can still shape-shift. This was one of the features about them that drew Scarlet to them. Their ability to shape-shift makes their forms more malleable and thus a better subject for the transformation in the nightmare plant.

2. Is it still true that the Oratuss invented the prophets to control the krait people?

This is ancient history. No one knows the truth behind this, not even the krait—although most krait would not take kindly to the implication. If and when we reveal the truth behind this, you’ll hopefully be there to discover it in-character.

3. Does “not anytime soon” in reference to joining the pact indicate that you’re willing to change their ‘black hat’ status if the story demands it and that the possibility that they can change exists (it’s a living world after all cough) or is it just your way of saying never? :P

I’m always willing to make changes to characters if it makes sense with the story. I learned long ago to never say never. I mean…look at the charr.

4. Last but not least – need moar krait interaction ingame. Preferably without the annoying whining Quaggan middle-(wo)man. ;(

They’ll be around for a long time.
:)

Thank you very much for taking your time to answer these questions, Angel!
Also the detail in the other post about how the toxic krait are perceived by the normal krait is actually very pivotal (and I hope it will be touched upon in some way outside the forum).

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The Krait or the Quaggan? Because if you mean the Quaggan will be around for a long time then may I propose a joyous new seasonal event. We could call it “The annual Quaggan hunt”, and players could hunt the Quaggan to extinction. It would be glorious. Imagine the story possibilities Angel! This is exactly the kind of thing you need in order to convert the Krait into allies.

Sign me up.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh Konig I was joking andaddingnothingofsubstancetothisdiscussion. Didn’t you hit my drama button. ;(

But yeah seriously speaking I don’t think either that we have any likely candidate beside Captain Evon Gnashblade.

Or… Hero-tron for Council, acting as Evon’s puppet!

http://www.dramabutton.com/

@Aaron Ansari

Unfortunately until Angel or the LS itself give us their reason for sticking around at all despite all the things listed in this thread we actually can’t rule that obelisk-shard salary out.
And assuming the alliance is still supported by the other krait settlements there’s gotta be a benefit for them somewhere.
And if they’re not, well that’d bring us back to Atlas’ question.

(Tho IMO the splinter-faction thing is starting to push gameplay/story boundaries of the numbers of alliances now but that’s kind of another issue.)

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Blurk.6231:

Well everywhere where normal Krait are, there are Obelisk Shards, so it seems like the whole Krait race is benefitting from the alliance.

*benefited. That’s all in the past now.

Arguably. A few krait escaped with some of the obelisk shards to beyond the plot so they’re still benefiting from the shards they got (whatever they’re doing with them atm) at the price of errr… a dead fake prophet, their first crushing defeat in their history and a still growing number of thousands of causalities including 3 Oratuss of which all in the end didn’t change their overall situation …what.

Angel McCoy.1832:

1) Does this mean the Kraits were driven out of the ocean homes by the elder sea dragon 250 years ago, so they were forced to live on land?

2) If the Kraits were xenophobic 250 years ago, and as of today they are no longer xenophobic, does that mean they are no longer the force of pure evil that we thought they are?

The answer to your first question is in this wiki page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unending_Ocean

Keep in mind the “about”. There’s a wiggle factor of 10-15 years either before or after that number that you should keep in mind. In other words, that number isn’t exactly correct.

As to your second question—the krait are evil. I don’t see them joining the Pact any time soon.

The krait are still xenophobic. But, xenophobia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia) is a fear of or hatred for any person or group that is not like the accepted group. It’s racism. In the same way white-supremicists are xenophobic.

They’re not so xenophobic that they won’t even consider taking slaves. They do take slaves. A lot. So they do deal with other races on a regular basis. No, this isn’t an alliance with them, but it is using them. They have proven they’re willing to use other races, if it suits their purposes.

With regard to the article by Ree Soesbee, that particular article was written on May 4, 2011, while we were still developing the game (launched over a year later).

The article provides a general description of krait based on their personality profile and history. You might call it a preview. We (Ree, Jeff, and the entire team) did more development of the krait after that article went live.

Ree even says in the article, “The krait were featured in the original Guild Wars game, and we very much wanted to continue their story in Guild Wars 2. We knew so little about their culture and society; as we were expanding the game into new underwater regions, it was exciting to add new depth (pun intended) to an existing race.” Though she speaks in the past tense in this article, the adding new depth didn’t stop there.

You’ll find references in-game to how quaggans were driven from their homes by krait that had been driven from theirs.

Since the blog is more of a draft then and a few things might have changed, would you mind clarifying a few unclear points if time allows it Angel?

1. No really, what happened to their ability to shape-shift? Did you decide to retcon it out or is there a lore explanation that we will eventually come across ingame? I mean the blog mentions it too and we see their near-death frenzy (as in gaining more might-stacks and fury the less HP the Damoss-type krait have) but we don’t see them transforming which was their defining feature in GW1.

2. Is it still true that the Oratuss invented the prophets to control the krait people? I had a discussion with Konig some time ago and it led nowhere because it wasn’t clear whether the blog was outdated on that. According to the behind-the-scenes section of the blog, the priesthood invented their prophets. But the Oratuss we come across ingame during the LS firmly believe in their return. Retcon or is there an explanation?

3. Does “not anytime soon” in reference to joining the pact indicate that you’re willing to change their ‘black hat’ status if the story demands it and that the possibility that they can change exists (it’s a living world after all cough) or is it just your way of saying never? :P

4. Last but not least – need moar krait interaction ingame. Preferably without the annoying whining Quaggan middle-(wo)man. ;(

@Konig des Todes

That’s what I meant with borderline nonexistent. :P It’s the only quest involving krait and beside the blue orb it doesn’t touch anything new at all. Every other event ingame involving quaggans with their village 10 feet next to a tower crying for help can tell you more or less exactly the same about them.
But Oratuss? Obelisks? Numerology? Shape-shifting? What’s that.

-Edit: got ninja’d while writing my wall xd-

On krait, as much as I love them as race and their potential to bring and push moral ambiguity to GW2’s setting, I feel like a big problem is that unlike all other races (with exception of Karka and Largos) we REALLY don’t see much of what their lore-post told us about them.

Compare to Hylek where we hear and see about their tribe-mentality, their poison and alchemy skills and their religion in the PS and events. Or the Dredge their backstory as dwarven slaves which we also saw in GW1, then their troubles with the moletariate and there’s also lots of dredge-dredge and player-dredge interaction ingame.

And the krait….? Well, what we knew before the living story without the lore blog from the game alone: They sacrifice and enslave whatever crosses their path in the name of their prophets.

That’s it. Nothing ingame ever came close to suggesting that they’re ‘ardent mathematicians’ or showed any kind of high intelligence (beside forming coherent sentences), nothing ingame ever hinted to what’s happened to their shapeshifting, nothing ingame ever even hinted to an established priesthood and social structure among them, nothing ingame ever suggested that the krait would go grawl-mode at the mention of their prophets and least of all, nothing ingame ever hints that they’re slowly getting ‘desperate’ for power.

Heck without the lore-blog post they’d appear to be a bunch of primitives who live in tribes and fanatically kill whatever they come across. The LS gave us a few Oratuss (finally!) and they weren’t much more than regular mooks unfortunately.

So coupled with of the quality of the LS in terms of lore delivery (like with this case going pretty much against exactly what we were told in the blog) and just how …errr… borderline nonexistent interaction between krait and krait or player and krait is (and therefore information ingame which would have given us more insight on what Angel told us) I think the lashback is kinda …natural?

…oh and for the sake of Topic: You see this wall up there yeah I love lore. P:

Naetell.3815:

-snip because Aaron pretty much answered everything I wanted to put there-

Worse than destroyers, akin to the doing of an Elder dragon…
Were these things the writers themselves said? Or was it said by characters in the game?

If you would recall, before the game was released, people said the Elder dragons had poor foundations in the lore as well.
I would not say zero, but clearly not enough explaining has been done.
As for succeeding where Zhaitan didn’t. Zhaitan didn’t send a massive air force on LA, a city with no air defenses. His minions came by sea, and even then it took the combined might of the three orders to chase those minions out.

See next post.

Worse than destroyers was ingame. It was even clarified by the devs because the wording was a little unclear that they meant to say that the Molten Alliance is worse than destroyers.

Elder dragons unfound in lore? Wut? Would you back up that claim with something?

And that is exactly the problem. Would you have said before this patch in regards to the PS "oh, Zhaitan only sent his fleet’’? He could have easily sent a dozen of the Tequatl-lookalikes that you can see fighting Pact airships over Orr to LA. But that’s not where the devs wanted to take the personal story with Zhaitan who’s been well established as eldtritch abomination over the whole game. That’s however where they went with Scarlet who even proclaims air superiority wins wars as if Tyria had a whole history of air battles, so that creates the nasty comparison.

Naetell.3815:

Would you argue no good stories can be written with a “Mary Sue” type character in them?

I’m arguing that they set themselves up for a ‘Mary Sue’ by forgetting about the nature of static characters. They could only develop her with backstory (something along these lines is something they admitted in a livestream themselves) and they screwed up exactly that. But to answer your question, no. A good story can be written even with a Mary Sue. It’s tricky, but I’d say it depends on the setting and where the focus of the story lies.

Naetell.3815:

So people complained, they recitified that, and now complain more because it wasn’t handled perfectly? Isn’t that asking for too much given the medium and timespan this was done in?
Had you preferred the exposition be done by a GM avatar instead?

Gameplay and Story will always clash somewhere if not handled right. In this case, I’d say it was simply a kneejerk reaction to the complaints. Gameplay-wise they put all the needed info about Scarlet at one place so no one would miss her backstory. At the same time story-wise it’s created a situation where everyone at one place conveniently happened to know about Scarlet’s mentors and some of her backstory when only one, two patches before no one even knew who she was.

For time and medium it’s been mentioned a couple of times by the devs themselves that the 2 week cadence leads to lots of plot-important content being cut because they only have 4 months for each release. It’s obvious that the development windows they have now don’t suffice to put in everything they want for each release. But they’ve made the cadence GW2’s new unique selling point so whether they’ll change it to something else remains to be seen.

And since you’ve asked me about my preference. I would have preferred it if they left out the backstory completely and put something else for the NPCs. It only made her character worse as stated multiple times in this thread. It’s not that putting the short stories ingame itself is a bad thing, not at all – they just picked the wrong short story to do that imo.

Oh dear it’s quote-wars time.

Naetell.3815:

Oh my, more TVTropes terminology.
I think what you mean to say is that Scarlet’s improbable characterisation strains the suspension of disbelief to its extremes, even to the point many people give up on the story.
It seems again, that a lack of information is the cause of what troubles people with this story.

Lack of information or very questionable information. I’m just repeating what was said before, but the issue is that things keep happening that rely on an explanation to be accepted as believable. See what Konig said about Scarlet’s graduation as example. Then imagine the living story without the interviews (that happen to be scattered on fan sites across the internet which in itself should be a red flag for how bad their problem with delivering lore and story is) and livestreams. Until it was brought up in an interview on a site somewhere in the depths of the internet that she only took special courses, Scarlet graduating from all 3 asuran colleges was pretty much a lore sacrilege. And that’s unfortunately exactly what was ingame and in the short story.

Naetell.3815:

A murder mystery isn’t always about who did it. The why and how of things can be made just as interesting. It is all a matter of writing.

I saw the mystery puzzle part as an extended recap of the information they did give us over the past year, with some new information added in.
I do not think that at that point of the story, they should have done more exposition.

Despite that, the why of things is keeping people invested if you look at other parts of the forum. Rampant speculation is going on everywhere. Revealing everything before the end doesn’t suit every kind of story.
There is, however, a lack of foreshadowing.

We’re not running low on foreshadowing itself. The steam vents in Flame and Frost, Scarlet’s first appearance ingame, the veil hiding the tower, were foreshadowing to the respective releases. Scarlet’s secret lair with everything in it is foreshadowing of the ‘reveal’. My point, they shouldn’t have made the big reveal of this mystery the foundation and center of the plot. And then put said reveal on how everything is connected and why everything is happening at the very, very end.

What I meant to say with my analogy is simply that we’re missing the ‘clue’-parts of a murder mystery. Not the EOTM release with the puzzle. I’m talking about the whole living story season. Until recently absolutely everything was a disjointed mess that made little sense and that’s a fairly negative kind of ‘mystery’.

- Next post -

Thirding what was said before, no the lore wasn’t broken only bent to almost spine-breaking degrees with story-telling that relies on too much suspension of disbelief. And the attempts to clear up on that suspension have been incredibly poor, nonexistent or voodoo shark (i. e. attempts at explaining a plothole only raised more questions)

The worst to me was the dev’s attempt at making this season a pseudo-murder mystery. Except instead of ‘who dun it’ we have a fat ‘why’ and except of putting clues together to get the big picture, all the important clues are left out on purpose. THAT was a huge mistake. It’s the penultimate release and the whole story arch relies on the idea that we don’t know why anything is happening. (which unfortunately happens to be why we should be invested and care and follow the story, y’know)

Then Scarlet as character…well, Konig summed it up nicely up there. But if I may add a thing or two, another thing about her is how she ‘dwarves’ all of the enemy groups we face. Flame legion which was the bane of charr and humans for centuries? Her minions.
Dredge, Inquest, Nightmare Court-faction? Her minions. Krait which were pretty much the poster-child for pure evil and founded on the idea that they’re SUPERIOR to all other races and wouldn’t need their help because they could just take whatever they need? Her minions. And to put that in perspective, the Molten Alliance has been described as worse than Destroyers and the ToN has been said to rival the doing of an Elder dragon. So her alliances are worse than whatever we faced before but they still bow to her – some even in /fear/. And now the new release even blatantly advertises that she succeeded where Zhaitan (and if we go back to GW1 even the White Mantle) failed.
So what, she’s on par with Elder dragons now?
But because there’s 0 substance and believable explanations behind her, this attempt to elevate her as threat feels cheap. She’s compared to things that have a stronger foundation and make more sense. And that her factions are better established than her as well yet are given mere minion status worsens the sentiment.

Then we have to consider that Scarlet isn’t open for visible character development – she is a completely static character by nature and only changing ever so slightly over the past few releases which however isn’t development. No character development isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. A character who isn’t likely to change anymore still can make for a good story if you show their development in retrospective. In our case, that would be in the form of the short story, the mentors she visited and the few other characters (Pale tree, Caithe, Canach) who knew her as Ceara.

Problem, Anet screwed up major times and instead of establishing development we were just given “Scarlet is awesome at EVERYTHING”. So the thing that was meant to make her broke her completely and thus she ascended to the unholy halls of suedom.

Meanwhile the little tidbits ingame about her mentors were little more than what we already knew. At this point of the LS it felt like they were rushing to get the short story and more lore stuffed into the game after people complained about that.
That in turn created a weird situation where everyone in Thunderidge suddenly knew about Scarlet and lore-wise a few obscure plotholes (…how the hell does Ela Makkay know that krait are ardent mathematicians if they don’t keep any records? Other than “it’s the priory they know stuff”. Similarly how the hell did the priory suddenly find out about the leyline-intersection under LA now?)

It was basically too late to go back and add more to her by then. So everything from then on seems to be damage control and adding things to smooth the bumps out.

He seems to have an eye damaged in the fight with the Molten Berserker. I observed it thrice so far, he just shows up and leroys into the the middle of the battle. Seems to me like he’s scripted to run into the zerg, so I’d say it’s not the miasma.

Also I don’t know about him wearing an eyepatch in the novel but new datamined chat codes ([&AgGowwAA] and [&AgGmwwAA]) seem to indicate they’ll be in the gemstore as cosmetic item soon so he’ll definitely start wearing an eyepatch (again?) next time we see him. (also IIRC his Mini shows him with an eyepatch now?)

M’bad forgot to mention that. It’s Priory-only dialogue. P:

Here’s the screenie.

Second part of the convo only says that they dunno her plan still and that they’re focused on the miasma causalities for now.