Guild Wars 2

If you talk to Ela Makkay outside of LA at the Gendarra Entrance she tells you that they Priory found out that there’s an intersection of leylines under LA.

What convenient placement. Thaumanova Mk. II here we go.

Very random small tidbit but something I noticed earlier today – the symbol on the Minor rune of Nightmare looks a bit like that zig-zag drawing from her lair that no one figured out yet.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

One interesting thing to consider:

The krait and Nightmare Court have never been east of the Shiverpeaks.

The Flame Legion and – sans one wiped out colony – dredge have never been west of the Shiverpeaks.

The Toxic Alliance and Molten Alliance are of groups that never met each other… how do you think the krait ideologies (enslave everyone under the rule of their Prophets) and the Flame Legion ideologies (enslave everyone under the rule of their gods) would react when met?

I could see the two forming an alliance of their own – perhaps enslaving the NC/dredge as the Flame Legion already intended to enslave the dredge – once Scarlet dies.

Oh no it’s the Slavers’n’Slaves Alliance. Gotta enslave ’em all!

And it’s an interesting thought, though to me it’s more likely that the Krait and Flame legion would fall into battle and try to make the other faction part of their little slave army as well. Can’t see them tolerating other religions. My Prophets vs your Gods.

Next in our Living Story – Flame and Water! The clash of Tyria’s fanatic zealot factions! Cooking gets boosted to 500 so the other races can make themselves Pop Corn as they watch the clash of the extremes.

But nah. That brings me to another cool thought.
Gaheron tried to ascend to godhood by magical means and we stopped him in the nick of time. (Whether he really would be a God is another question)

What if the krait found out about the method the Flame legion used and tried to make a ‘real’ prophet on their own? After all, their prophets are ascended krait and they’re not low on the magical capacity to make it possible.

@Erukk
Yeah exactly what I meant. Consequences. We need things to happen.

What I don’t want is every faction to go home and continue their usual evilness in their corners without anything coming out of it as if the alliances never existed. If Tyria evolves, so should the enemy-factions/races P:

(And I need a toxic hypnoss for hire to pose as mini to go with my currently bugged mini toxic nimross- wait what)

-sigh-

Reading this thread REALLY makes me hope that the alliances aren’t just gonna be dumped and return to normal as if nothing ever happened as soon as Scarlet goes down.

I’d love to see some named new enemy-leaders who try to keep each faction together appear after Scarlet dies. Or at least some consequences which also can play into other events (example Dredge Revolution and Molten Alliance conflicting).
They seriously need to be given some substance.

All of the alliances listed rely on varying degrees of suspension of disbelief, ranging from Inquest ok makes some sense over Flame legion and Nightmare court renegade faction really?? to wth threatening pirates and /blackmailing krait/ whathappenedtobeingsilvertongued.
So I’m also harboring small hopes that the forming of the alliances will be explained more in-depth in the future because the given explanations are very bare-bone or as example with the steam creatures-twisted watchwork connection, complete voodoo shark at the moment.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

ElysianEternity.6215:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Huh. I don’t remember that. Was it in a red box?

Yeah it was a red box.

Probably just an oversight then- those boxes are only used for combat-triggered one-liners, which due to their sporadic nature never have anything to do with the specifics of what’s going on around them. My guess would be that when ToN introduced that kind of voiceacting to the krait, it got applied to both versions of Nymfassa.

That’s very possible. On the other hand it was definitely a female krait voice that sounded a lot like hers. Hm, I’d have to go back and check whether ToN-lines updated the lines of other krait because I think a couple are Toxic-Alliance exclusive (“Others will avenge me”, “Worthless vermin”, “Strike together” are some I don’t think I’ve heard normal krait shout but I’m gonna beat up a dozen snakes and assure myself now).

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Huh. I don’t remember that. Was it in a red box?

Yeah it was a red box.

@Konig des Todes
Yeah champ isn’t the right word but you know what I mean. Self-aware named minion type A, cough. P:

Aaaand Trahearne states that he has seen this peculiar form of corruption before and it’s said in the mission that it is more toxic and deadly than any blade. Reminder, if you fall into the water it gives you a debuff (akin to lava and the toxic spores one when you approached the tower) that quickly kills you.
After Trahearne says that he remembers this corruption the Player wonders if that’s what happened to the krait to which Trahearne replies that they probably rose as fresh undead again. Which is exactly what we see.
It’s a corruption in form of poison that kills instantly and causes Risen.

Tho I can see draxynnic’s explanation playing into that (getting overwhelmed by their own sacrifices and the corruption being transferred) as well. Which would indeed mean that this kind of corruption is ‘mobile’.

Also, another minor fun thing to consider about that mission. Nymfassa’s dying words are “Prophets forgive me.” Nothing too big, but I found it amusing that she begged her prophets for forgiveness before dying although she’s been shouting about Zhaitan earlier. Maybe her mind was twisted into believing the krait prophets work with Zhaitan. Just found it interesting because we don’t really see the Risen priests doing that. :p

Pitching in here, lately I’ve been screenshooting and scouting for ambient dialogue by enemies. Also been trying to screenshot peculiar dialogues in Personal Story-steps that can be missed easily.

Currently just doing that for my own amusement but if anyone’s interested in the snippets I got, just show me where to put them P:

…Huh how did the topic turn into WW2 carpet-bombing. <_>

eRRRR ON MORE TYRIA RELATED MATTERS…

While the Pact hasn’t been shown to have any strict air-defenses beside trebuchets, flak cannons and the megalaser, the Risen managed to shoot down a couple of pact-copters. There’s that one event almost no one ever does right outside the Rally point WP where you have to take out the Risen anti-air cannons.

Lets keep in mind that airships were invented very recently and thus there was no need for that kind of air defense. I’m sure they could invent something, it’s just that until Scarlet there wasn’t any reason to make a defense against the pact’s own creation. Maybe they have invented something in the meantime, maybe not.

Hrm, my concern was more about the source-thing Konig.

We’ve got Fort Trinity where the dead awaken instantly after dying as other example too, I know. But that’s a case where a) there are hordes of Risen already b) they kill the pact members whose bodies /then/ get corrupted.

In the Mire Sea there’s neither hordes nor a champion. It’s just a corruption that kills anything and brings them back as Risen instantly, which is supposedly what happened to the krait. And this corruption threatened the Deeps before Nymfassa was made a champion, so that leads to the question how can she be the source then?

…or more precisely the Restless Deeps.

Intro: I did the quest “Liberating Apatia” on an alt and came across something I missed the other two times I did this quest in the past.

I took the usual quick route up and beat the boss, alright. But instead of exiting the instance I dabbled around a bit. I climbed the tower again and saw a few krait I had missed. Apparently this was the correct path because going towards them triggered a line from Trahearne that was supposed to play on the way up before fighting the risen Nymfassa.

Paraphrased, “I can feel the source of this corruption at the top of the tower.”
After beating Nymfassa, the waters in the Restless Deeps also turn normal again in the instance.

Question is: How can Headslaver Nymfassa /BE/ the source of the corruption when the krait orb held the waters clean off this corruption before she turned Risen. Its removal is what doomed the krait city.

Does that mean specific dragon corruption (or at least Zhaitan’s) is capable of moving its epicenter and form freely from miasma and corrupted water and whatever straight into a corrupted lifeform which can continue spreading the corruption in these forms?

Maybe I’m forgetting something completely obvious because it’s late, but atm I can’t recall any other Risen who created more Risen passively by just existing and being a source of dragon corruption.

Duh, obviousy Bloomanoo and Peneloopee will die.

I feel Aaron’s on the right track here and that it’s mostly story-telling ingame.
And in return the way they decided to do the story-telling leaves no room for good pacing and interaction and thus DE appears mostly bland. Tho they’re not quite Mary Sues. Just bland.

I for a change, liked Eir. She’s calm and collected, has a leadership persona but is afraid of failure and is very easily discouraged – that’s her personality. I don’t see how being introverted equals having no personality, if anything she was written the best ingame. I guess it’s just that people don’t like characters that aren’t boom and bang about their interactions.

Logan has been discussed back and forth to death. See the what’s wrong with Logan-thread that floated here in the lore-forum some time ago, it was a really good read.

If anyone got hit the worst by the writing it’s Zojja. Zojja has some huge pride- and bitterness-issues. Her adamant finger-pointing and blaming Eir and the whole suicide-deal was ridiculous. Only after playing an Asura you get to find out that she has temper-issues in general and after the second quest-line she hesitantly apologizes. And then her bad side clashing with Eir’s finally makes a bit more sense, but the delivery is still pretty bad.

@Aaron Ansari

If it’s so painfully obvious to the players and the excuse for why the NPC don’t do a thing is nonexistent or badly delivered, we’ve got just that. We know it’s not just the Aetherblades and we also know that they know that it’s not only the Aetherblades anymore and it’s obvious they couldn’t defend against these threats.

It could have been “Ellen failed to convince the majority, only a few other councilors supported her. They let her raise the defenses some, but we know that won’t suffice by far.” It could have been “Ellen informed the council and they agreed with her, but they don’t have enough time anymore to raise their defenses.” It could have been “Ellen is doing her best, but she’s told us that LA doesn’t have the resources to defend against such an attack. It’s a city of merchants and pirates, not a military organization. Even if they requested help from outside it’d probably be too late.”
It could have been a lot of things.

Anything to not make them look completely incompetent by brushing off an obviously existing danger far beyond their capability would have achieved the same ( = LA is screwed) but with less groan-inducement and less elements reminiscent of generic animes aimed at 10 year olds (Government underestimates threat, only our band of heroes can save the day now! u g h)

Actually, the Captain’s Council going “nope” on what obviously is going to be an attack on LA is already some major idiot ball holding (again).

“Oh after Claw Island, a Karka invasion, an attempt to get a seat in the Council by assassinating one of us, an Aetherblade assault and base right in front of our doorstep and a probe somehow put stealthily without anyone noticing right in the middle of our harbor and despite all this proof you gathered, do you REALLY think anyone would attack Lion’s Arch AGAIN? Pshawwwww.”

When I read my mail after the instance and it was “tl dr; only Kiel supports us” I wanted to claw my eyes out. While the way of bringing the story across has improved vastly and the characters themselves are getting better, parts of the story like these still dip deeply into Saturday-morning cartoon and fanfiction-territory.

Alas it can only get better. My guess about the orders is that they’ll be too busy defending their own HQs to do something – remember, her lair had all of them and LA marked so they might be attacked as well.

@Mad Queen Malafide

Actually Evon was part of the Ash legion before founding the BLTC. So he might still be a stealthy dagger-wielding ninja. And he possibly may have interests in a lot more than we currently know other than LA and commerce. (Cough Abaddon’s fall as example cough)

Anyways, he’s my top-contestant for E, because the silly LA-attack foreshadowing reeks of obvious to me andIdon’texpectanymindblowingtwists. How Marjory didn’t notice that it was a Charr…well we’ve had Tybalt posing as Demmi with some mesmer magic, so for all we know it could be some Ash-legion magic tricks.

My second guess is our exposition fairy Ela Makkay.

My third guess is it’s going to be a totally new character. Whoever it is, from a writers perspective it needs to be someone whose introduction would make sense to the majority of the playerbase – means also those who aren’t as invested in lore.

DaShi.1368:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I’m going to go on record to reiterate that people are probably reading too much into the injector. We know that Scarlet’s was after the anti-toxin. The anti-toxin would’ve been obtained while inside the injector. Also, iirc, the different fluids inside the injector were different colors, implying that they were different chemicals that had to remain separate until it was time to inject them. It would make no sense for Scarlet to not take the injector, since that would require transferring those fluids from an already perfectly adequate receptacle into another, and there is no reason to believe the injector or the technology used in its making are at all remarkable.

You guys are saying that a supervillainess who has mastered teleportation and the hacking of clockwork robots would have been unable to grasp the complexities of a hypodermic needle. You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?

Sorry, this is rapidly becoming a pet peeve of mine. I know I’m overreacting, but… grr.

And you’re saying that she couldn’t develop an anti-toxin on her own. It seems highly unlikely that she’d bet her plan on the chance of someone developing an antitoxin that she couldn’t make herself. In addition, the antitoxin is now useless against the latest version of the toxin. If anything, she used the anti-toxin just to make her toxin stronger.

I hope you don’t mind me chirping in here, but if I may share my thoughts:
I think she wasn’t after an anti-toxin in general because she could do that herself – she was after the anti-toxin /we/ would use.
There’s possibly multiple ways to make an anti-toxin to the spores but she wanted to make it resistant to the only approach we figured out.
Figuring out a completely new way would take us a lot of time and during this time we’d be completely defenseless against her improved toxin. At least that’s how I saw it.

@ Andele

First – dude, cut out the insults. Lore discussions get heated but someone disagreeing with you is no reason to insult them. Even if peeps here disagree about opinions, theories and what’s fact and not, we can still respect them as people yeah?

Secondly, idk what’s the deal with referring to Germany (besides trying to imply Konig is German which he might not be?) but rest assured that your grammar would score you a 6 in a Realschul-test here. (Or a F in middle school for our ‘murican friends)
My grammar is far from perfect, but your lack of care and spelling makes your text posts a ridiculously hard read and frankly I can’t decipher half of your reasoning which leads me to the third point:

No, no, no and no to your obscure headcanons. You seem to have no clue about GW’s lore or how to go about lore in general. Educate yourself before you barge in and claim you’re right/others are wrong.

List of Bugged Minis:
- Mini Evon Gnashblade (won’t move )
- Mini Peacemaker Shocktrooper (won’t move)
- Mini Toxic Nimross (won’t move)
- Mini Toxic Hybrid (does summoning motion repeatedly when idling, completely bugged underwater animation)
- Possibly more

How to reproduce issue: Just move. In the Mini Hybrid’s case, dive and observe.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Okay, crazy hypothesis here, but what if he really was a Krait Prophet, rather than just one of Scarlet’s experiments? I know that he’s basically a Sylvari/Krait hybrid, but what if Scarlet actually succeeded in recreating one of the Krait’s prophets?

Could it be that the Krait Prophets are an extinct sub-race of the Krait, and that he really was the last of his kind?

Then he forgot to bring his army of sacrificed quaggans to drown and take over the world! :c

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In this case, I think it’d be a serpentine plant race…

Wait a minut…

Oh shi-

Edit: Hm. What if he was simply the result of an Anti-Pale Tree? Like one of complete nightmare, with the sentient ‘thing’ we sensed being it’s caretaker? P:

Tho I like the subspecies theory as idea, even it’s just crazy hypothesis.

@Konig des Todes

1. S i g h. It’s PR shoved into lore, for a lack of better terms. The possible implication that the Oratuss are doing anything like real-world religious institutions might do is less obvious and offensive than having the ‘prophet’ of a race associated with pure evil descending from the heavens as boss-enemy to beat up. It’s also an excuse to show how manipulative the Oratuss are.
It’s just Anet making double-sure to not step on any egg-shells.

IMO, it’s really, really redundant and I also say that it makes no sense. We’re on the same wave on that sentiment I think. Think about it, where ingame does it ever give us the “no association to rl”-disclaimer? I am very certain that the majority of the playerbase doesn’t know about that blog-post but that a lot came by krait ingame.
I’ve yet to come across a single person who felt deeply offended by the mention of prophets.

2. It’s likely but not directly a confirmation. I know the two Oratuss from the Tower-of-Nightmare storyline were deeply convinced of their prophet’s return.
It could be that they eventually began to believe their own lies which isn’t completely out of question since we’re talking about hundreds of years at least (or whatever ancient is supposed to mean in Tyria nowadays) and have to keep their oral tradition and complete lack of written language in mind.

It also could be retconned. I mean, we also don’t see them doing much shape-shifting. The blog states that they’re capable of it and it was their defining feature in GW1. And we never got a confirmation either to my knowledge. So yeah…

Interesting. Forgot about that line from the interview. However…

“Before my awakening, all I knew was the nightmare. I was never meant for the pleasantries of the Grove.”

And a little less convincing:

“Once I awoke from the dream, I found myself drawn toward the Nightmare Court. It was clearly my destiny to join them.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nightmare_Recruit

So yeah, we have a couple sylvari who claim to have been born in Nightmare. What else could “all I knew was the nightmare” mean?

(SeemslikeAnetscreweduphere,coughs)

We’ve got Word of God vs Word of God going on here, so rather than breaking our heads about something we couldn’t possibly confirm as righter than the other, we should keep that question in mind and throw it at the devs next time they show up.

@Konig des Todes

Yeah and the bolded part outright says the prophets were invented by the Oratuss.
To me the context is that this was stated to further defuse the potential association to rl religions by saying “btw their prophets aren’t even real but none of them knows so don’t worry.”

Tho I feel that we’d start hairsplitting by going any further with that.

Trust me, I’d really love it if there actually were Krait prophets (Outside of Koda it feels atm like only some of the player races are allowed anything on the level of God-like entities… Zintl is what.) but to me the sentence in bold is pretty clear. I wished they didn’t add it because IMO an artist or writer shouldn’t have to restrict themselves because someone might get upset. Saying “Krait religion =/= rl religion” should suffice. But a company wanting to ensure their jacket’s clean is understandable and I can’t really blame them.

Errr no Konig. Heh. Scroll down to behind the scenes. ;P

The krait have always been an unapologetically evil race. While we take pains in many instances to provide two sides to any story and to show that even evil races, cultures, and characters have good reasons for their actions, the krait were designed to be straightforwardly “black hat.” We approached their focus on religion very cautiously, knowing that the word “prophets” would bring to mind modern religious references. It is important to note that we in no way want to compare krait fanaticism to any real-world faith. The prophets of the krait are false religious figures invented by a ruling priest caste to maintain their control. No part of the krait culture or religion is based on, or intended to resemble, any real-world parallel.

So yeah they’re made up. It’s confirmed from behind the scenes, hence why I said it’s kinda lame that it’s been confirmed for out-of-game reasons.

Andele.1306:

What if he is plain a sylvari plant demon krait thing body which got fused with a actual krait prophet mind… you know the body fusion thing which happens like 5 times in GW2 and 15+ times in GW1.

Their “prophets” were confirmed to be made up in the blog-post about the krait. Anet wanted to disperse any fears and assumptions about people thinking krait-religion is based on any real-life religions with prophets. (kinda lame that it’s confirmed for outside the game reasons, but yanno the deal with controversial topics)

So it can’t be an ‘actual krait prophet’ because ‘krait prophets’ don’t exist in canon. The krait are worshipping hot air. Their priesthood made them up at some point to control the krait people and over time the priesthood started to believe they were real themselves. Which leads us to the current mess.

Besides if it was a Krait with Sylvari parts, that’d be a modification on an adult.
But we pretty much witness its birth, so it’s not cyborg-ish like the Molten-Alliance bosses. :P

Actually Konig that gave me a thought.

/equips tinfoil hat

What if it’s not the first hybrid after all? What if Scarlet created something on a smaller scale like him before? After all, somehow she got those mysterious seeds from (current plothole) and /knew/ the result would be something krait-shaped and living coming out of the plant.

/puts tinfoil hat on tinfoil hat

Or what if she obtained the seeds from a location Modremoth showed her and the stalk was pretty much a means to create champions and she’s convinced it was her own plan to make the poison and yet the voices in may make her believe she was just doing his bidding. Angry Scarlet is angry. Cough, cough. /tinfoil-mode over

He REALLY is a big mystery. Just like the tower’s own awareness that was probably linked to his consciousness. I really hope that they will do more with this and not just drop the plot-thread. Asidefromlookingcool,IfoundtheHybridreallyinteresting.

And I was pondering whether it could link to sacrifice (simply because krait and sacrifice) but was the Hybrid aware that the krait saw him as prophet? Or did their collective magic feeding not only give him their shape but also actually created something based on their wishes? Or did he simply feed off their knowledge and used it, posing as prophet? His few lines give so little information…

I suppose us being his sacrifice is an acceptable answer, hm. P:

And I’m pretty sure he was the very first but maybe he hoped there would be more. If you looked around in the room with the Hybrid, you saw DOZEN of pots of various sizes like the one the hybrid emerged from. So this hope probably died with our rag-tag band of heroes storming in. Or at least that’s the way I interpreted it.

(Actually when I first did the puzzle in the Nightmare ends with the toxic spore I was afraid a small hybrid would pop out when it opened. But then it was just a spore. Hahaha.)

A somewhat Scarlet unrelated and probably short thread, this quote has been bugging and confusing me for a while.
It’s a non-chatbox scripted quote by the Toxic Hybrid, so it was VERY easy to miss.
But thankfully it’s also on the wiki. (Yay!)

So simple and quick question, what’s it referring to. Just what does it meaaaaaan.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

The toxin-sample one’s complete, I checked my chat-box. It’s just really short.

Impossible. The dialogue box with Kasmeer shows at the top that you clicks a “more dialogue” option, but the prior talk by Kasmeer isn’t there.

You know how when you talk to an NPC, there’s usually at least 2 clicking options, one with an arrow? The image of the dialogue box (talking to the NPC) shows an arrow option clicked at the top of it. You’re missing at least one image.

No wonder it’s not there.
I’m checking my file in psd and it’s a different one in the album. -_- I guess it didn’t save when I uploaded it. Annoying, but at least it’s not anything too important.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Despite the Nightmare having been pushed onto the Dream of Dreams for years, all Sylvari are of the dream. There’s no Sylvari born from nightmare.

Figured I could take this part out of your spoiler tag. This isn’t true actually. There are sylvari NPCs in-game who awoke with an instinctive call to the Nightmare.

It’s from this interview

(Hooray for more out-of-the-way lore stuff.) All Sylvari awake from the dream, but some reject it very soon after. There are no Nightmare-born Sylvari according to it.

The toxin-sample one’s complete, I checked my chat-box. It’s just really short.

And yeah I got the two 1322 D-entries of the journal with Season of Scion and Colossus in the wrong order. But Imgur doesn’t let me edit the album anymore, hrmph. P:

Anyways, tinfoil hat on and theorizing away!

Phew. Took me a while but here is all the dialogue of the LS instance A Study in Scarlet on Imgur.

Merry theorycrafting. ;P

I’ll post my own thoughts later.

For everyone who can’t access the Edge of the Mists-map,

Here’s the dialogue on Imgur.

I’m still working on the instance with Kasmeer and Marjory for safe-keeping until it’s on the wiki, quick reference and those that can’t get on GW2 during this LS, it’s 200 screenshots (****) so putting that together will take a few hours.

Okay, after an eternity (/username-pun) of trying I finally got in and screenshot all the dialogue of Taimi.
It’s a fair share of new information about her!
I’m going to screenshot the next instance and upload it to Imgur and then edit my post with it so others can participate in the theorycrafting.

Edit 1: Im gonna cancel and retry the instance to see for all possible dialogues. There’s a WHOLE lot to screenshot and it’s a one-time instance it seems.
It will take me a while so I’ll prolly make a new post here. P:

@Konig des Todes

Things ended suddenly and badly, however, when Ceara and her krewmate Teyo broke into the city’s archives and tampered with several of the designs they found there. It was presented to her as a means to give the Inquest a competitive edge in the upcoming Snaff Prize competitions, but Ceara also left her stamp on a few unrelated projects she found.

When caught, Teyo teleported herself to safety and left Ceara to face the consequences. The Council stripped Ceara of her academic credentials and the Peacemakers ejected her from Rata Sum. She laughed and left the city without any of her research notes or belongings, whistling as she went.

She wandered for several months before settling in with the Michotl hylek just outside Rata Sum (which required her to disguise herself under a hooded cowl to avoid the attention of the Peacemakers).

Meanwhile from the Personal Story quest, The Snaff Prize

Councillor Flax: Stop this! The contest is over. I hereby declare Varkk and his krewe win this year’s Snaff Prize!
Teyo: Unacceptable! That device derived from Inquest research, and I have evidence to prove it.
Councillor Flax: That’s a serious allegation. The judges will certainly look into it, but in the meantime…
Councillor Flax: The decision stands. However, in light of Teyo’s evidence, the Inquest may now reclaim its property.

So yeah the designs for the Snaff competition are for some weird reason in the archives and the Inquest tampered with some of them and in our case seems to have the collected ‘claims of evidence’ concerning the Snaff Savant’s inventions.

How Ceara kept it all in her head when it states she didn’t take any notes with her I don’t know. But them accessing the designs and her creating a device that allows her to teleport around without exit-gate which is exactly what the Translocator is still seems off to me.

Curiously enough there’s also that mention of her cowl which she also wore during Thaumanova and later on during the Jubilee.

So going by this, first she got kicked out of Rata Sum. And with that presumably also by the Inquest, seeing as her time with the Inquest was ‘brief’.

The Snaff competition is described as upcoming, which seems to indicate only a few months left. Upcoming isn’t what I’d describe a yearly event 8-7 months from now.
Then she wandered around several months before meeting the Hylek which means 3 months at least.
And then she joins Omadd’s experiment and goes coo-coo.
Thaumanova happened only recently before the PS.

According to the Fractal, she was part of the Inquest.
Then we see her wearing the cowl which she started wearing /after/ she got kicked out of Rata Sum and the Inquest.
And then inside of the Fractal she already acts and is even named as Scarlet Briar and not Ceara.
So with the Fractal inconsistency in mind and even leaving out the time-frame guessing of the archive-tampering which would just make it more confusing, the whole thing is still one confusing mess.

And actually at the end of the PS when Zojja works on the gun she says draconic energies. There’s no mention of it being made for Zhaitan in specific – it simply says lead tracer for draconic energies.

I think? what you’re thinking about is Gorr’s rifle which was destroying Zhaitan’s magical essence of his will inside of Risen and was specifically an anti-Zhaitan weapon.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And honestly, yes. Scarlet going after a ley line would make sense even if we didn’t know that she knew of it. At least, it would make as much sense as her somehow getting a dozen+ krait obelisk shards, or her somehow working with steam creatures, or her somehow easily hijacking the Watchknights, or her somehow being undetected by the Priory despite being right underneath them, or her somehow capturing one of the best thieves in existence (Caithe) and knowing said thief’s secret (which apparently everyone forgot about).

Shhh, don’t forget putting an energy probe right in front of the Whispers HQ without anyone noticing or caring for weeks. In addition to knowing where the HQ is.
And the mention of her breaking with Teyo into Rata Sum’s archives for the upcoming Snaff competition. That would place the whole Inquest dabbling some time before the PS whereas the short-story states that after the Inquest deal she wandered several months then stayed with the hylek. Teyo’s Scarlet’s former krewemate and the one who stole the Snaff Savant’s Translocator which apparently was supposed to serve as explanation for Scarlet’s crazy teleporting around, but this makes the whole “so where does thaumanova fit in” deal even more confusing.
Then we also have her base in Lion’s Arch, her somehow working with renegade courtiers that seem to be in just for the evulz and totally don’t mind following her instead of idk gutting her, her acquiring plans of the completely new pact airships without the pact caring or noticing and her lack of reason WHY countless mobs of pirates and whatever alliances should be afraid of her.

…yeah sorry I just had to butt in when I saw the chance cough cough. Tho if anything I mentioned got cleared up and I missed it feel free to correct. :p

Anywayyys, I’ve been thinking and trying to see the whole plot from another angle. By the end of the PS we have a multiracial army and even anti-dragon lasers. So unless there was a big new ‘hindrance’ to overcome, the next dragon assault would be really short because we already have the tech and even if it’d be destroyed we’d still have the knowledge to remake it. Only Primordus and the DSD would offer another kind of problem where our tech might be useless or at least less efficient because they’re underground and underwater respectively. ‘Might’.

I wonder if Scarlet could be an attempt at a ‘hindrance’. Iiii don’t know how the whole pale-tree convo plays into this because honestly my thinking-resources are drained atm, but assuming the painting on the ceiling was a lieutenant of modremoth or modremoth himself and she’s originally had her own plans how to remake the world the way she likes it but then Modremoth “hijacked” her and now uses her to quicken his awakening (…if he hasn’t awakened yet) and decimate the orders that make up the pact.

…or at least that’s a random thought. Not my favorite theory but my gut feeling tells me it’s either something not too ‘surprising’ or something so out of the blue we couldn’t have possibly guessed it.

@BrunoBRS

Information on their religion isn’t necessarily directly information on their civilization. It’s only a part of it. We know about their religion and that they’re divided into tribes which live on their respective sanctuaries and the whole deal with the voice and the claw for each one. Like we know they’re mostly a peaceful race, but we don’t know how far conflict between tribes goes as each has its own religious interpreter. We don’t know why they’re divided in tribes in the first place or if it’s just labelled ‘tribes’ and more like settlements. But given the different voices that seems unlikely. And we don’t know how far their magic and their technology goes either. We know the Kodan voice’s mind can access the mists so that’s something interesting. We also know they’re capable of building those huge sanctuaries.
So I wouldn’t classify them as minor race at all before Jormag, I’m definitely with you on them being major.

It just boils down to “Are they a fallen major race or are they still a major race and the rest is elsewhere.” And yeah without the info on the rest of the Kodan we can’t say anything for sure. Hence why I put them in ??? Because we really can’t know at this point.

The major-races thing also strikes me mostly as differing between player races and ‘everything else except the real baddies’.

Tho if I had to guess lore-wise, I’d just say the main-difference is what’s a civilization and what’s not. Also it seems to be a flexible differentiation..

Taking all intelligent races in GW2 and not just the currently ingame defined as minor ones in account…

I’d say (Opinionplz) Hylek, Skritt, Ogres, Grawl, Centaurs, Jotun and Quaggans are definitely lesser races.
- Jotun used to be a major race, became a lesser race because Jotun
- Quaggan are likely to have been a major race too before Bubble’s awakening. They had a royal family once which suggests civilization. But that’s gone now.
- The Skritt king in Brisban says he strives for the Skritt to become a civilization.

Then there’s sentient races that are even less advanced than the lesser races. Namely Trolls, Harpies, Giants and Ettins.

Then there’s major races. IMO that’s Humans, Charr, Norn, Sylvari, Asura, Dredge, Krait and Tengu.
- Dredge are definitely a civilization. A mostly hostile one but yeah. (Revolution where are you)
- Tengu are an isolated civilization. But we know they’re structured into different houses and have an emperor. We just don’t see much of them (yet).
- Krait are… difficult. From the blog-post about them we know that the ship-wreck towers we also see ingame are NOT their real architecture. It’s merely halfkittened structures for their slaves. Their living grounds are described as palatial. Tho even after their Exodus they seem to be united and all we observe them doing now is what they can do with scraps. The Toxic Alliance seemed to me more like the other Krait cities sending reinforcements to Kessex rather than that single settlement’s doing. (In the developer LS of the Tower of Nightmares the devs stated that they went along with the black-nuclear-green-glow design decision because they loved the idea of them changing due to expose to the tower’s spore. So it makes sense that not all krait over Tyria have a sudden color-swap despite possibly helping the cause. The few toxic krait at the other places seem to suggest that too.) The Krait seem to be in a limbo, they were definitely a major race before Bubbles. Now they’re not really a lesser race, not quite fallen, still tending to major but not as clearly as the others.

Then there’s category ??? starring the Largos, the Kodan and the race that gets forgotten more than the Forgotten, the Karka.
- Karka we know nothing about. They have a queen and a hive. Also follow ancients. They seem to be able to communicate, but from the tidbits we have they’re either glorified murder-crab-bees or maybe, maybe, maybe a bit more. MMMMRRPHPHPH?
- Largos are too ninja. Prolly a future major race.
- Kodan are in a kinda similar situation to the Krait but not. Result of their Exodus is that we don’t know much of their original civilization. We also don’t know just how many Kodan there still are. It’s difficult to tell if the few settlements and the refugees from FGS are all there is or if in Lore there’s still waves of refugees arriving. They’re also really scattered. Possibly a major race that became a lesser race, but there’s too much ??? about their original and current situation to clearly determine that.

Invisible dev-post wut.

But to throw in my 2 cents-text wall, I don’t hate Trahearne. Neither the spot-light stealing nor his personality.

I hate the garbled flow (or lack thereof) of the Personal Story that led to mediocre and poor presentation of character-development.
And with that what I hate more is the suspension of disbelief that builds up after Claw Island.

I did Norn/Vigil first and several alts later Sylvari/Priory recently.

Lets see, my legend-seeking Norn is now a Vigil and Forgal’s right-hand. Then there’s this Sylvari-scholar and apparently he’s an expert on Orr, alright. Although the PS shoves at your face how little the orders trust and can stand each other before Claw Island, Forgal speaks of this ‘bookworm’ in high tones. Something that already irks my Norn who had a difficult time proving himself to the battle-torn Forgal. Inbefore I know it, Forgal goes out in a kitten way like every good old military mentor must and we flee the island.
I barely know this scholar but instantly he decides to stick with me and follow me around because we share the same enemy. Okay.

Then there’s my Sylvari, he was introduced to Trahearne before and Sieran knowing and respecting him, both due to him being a firstborn and a known Scholar makes 100% sense. Trahearne having ties to the Priory makes sense and he even recognizes me as the Herald, at least for the first half of the mission. That a firstborn accompanies my Sylvari makes sense and if anything, my Sylvari would see it as an honor.

Aight, so that second part sounds real sound and nice, no? Actually really good flow, yes? Best possible scenario. So it can only get better?

Nah.
I can take Trahearne’s appointment to Pact-leader with a groaned ‘alright guess no other somewhat-established NPC would make sense, he knows about Orr more than anyone so that’s a thing’. Personally I can also look past the whole Caladbolg and “timid Scholar to General attempt at character development” stuff.

The domino-row of questionable things that bother me and start tumbling in retrospective are these ones:

So you meet the Tengu Izu Steelstrike who’s sworn friendship with Trahearne years ago when battling Risen. Nevermind that Trahearne expressed before that he rarely engages with Risen and prefers to avoid them, somehow he bonded with a, if not the only single travelling Tengu-Smith we’ve seen.

Following an even more extreme line of that, next we got Sayeh, aka the Lagos from the PS. Not only did Trahearne ever meet a Lagos, no she also declares that she owes him because they fought Risen off as tag-team on sea.

Then you have Trahearne’s multiple flesh-golems deal which seems strange but hey he’s apparently a learned Necromancer also gameplay-story segregation. That’s only awkward and a little bothersome but later on becomes a tad ridiculous when you meet a NPC in Fort Trinity who outright states that Trahearne is the most powerful Necromancer in all of /Tyria./

Okay, he’s not only had ties with a military organization that doesn’t think highly of Scholars, a SECRET SOCIETY (???), and the Priory (which makes the most sense of those three), he’s also possibly the first Sylvari (unless the pale tree had an older daughter) and he’s the best Necromancer in Tyria and he has the hardest known Wyld hunt of them all which gets shoved at you constantly and he also ends up becoming head of the Pact. Also he’s become friend with a travelling Tengu of which the vast majority live isolated in the Dominion so we barely ever meet any and he met a Lagos who ended up feeling indebted to him.

I can live with timid-scholar Trahearne as character, really.

But looking at the story and how from Claw-Island on Trahearne’s ‘special accomplishments’ sky-rocket in a way that makes it seem extremely shoehorned coupled with a horrible introduction makes the sentiment of dislike understandable.
I don’t mind him being the pact-leader but the “story about you” with Trahearne leading is probably already the breaking point for many others.

As comparison, lets take Caithe who’s also a special snowflake being a firstborn, got a special wyld hunt, fought a dragon before in a famous guild and is constantly hinted at by NPCs to be a remarkable Thief. And she also has ties to all of the 3 orders.
No one cares about Caithe. For one, her status is already established by the beginning so it can’t seem to come out of the ‘blue’. The other thing I guess is that she’s never more than the mentor.

Tho with this discussion, I gotta say it’s interesting to see what makes and breaks a character for others.

The Personal story is fairly confusing with its pacing and time-frame.
Don’t quote me on it, but I remember reading that the Great Hunt takes place in Winter. At least we know it’s yearly.

Some PS-quest lines seem to take place over a single day (Order of Whispers quest-line with Demmi states Ladi Wi cast an invisibility-cloak spell on her when she left DR that can only be used once a day on the same person) while the foundation of the Pact to the Invasion on Orr seem to span over weeks and possibly months.

Then there’s timeframes that could be days or weeks or months, like the inbetween time of Forging the Pact and the beginning of the Personal-Fear story-branches. There’s no indication of time I remember. But over the course of that the Pact built Fort trinity. I don’t think there’s much to go on here beside speculation and thumb-estimates.

Aaaaand since the LS is now synched up, everything seems to take place in real time as little sense as that makes. Batkitten is hitting the fan in Tyria every fortnight, woop.

@Konig des Todes

Truth to be told all my assumptions are fairly loosely. And by fairly I mean take everything with a thousand maybes.
Destroyer of Earth one
http://images.wikia.com/gw/images/2/2d/Destroyer_of_Earth.jpg made me think of a wurm sticking its head out the earth.

And the Dryder/Deed one the lower body …kinda? Idk about the upper half. I didn’t wanna put “upright grub glued on a crab”, so that’s the closest that fit a minuscule bit, haha.

Interesting topic I must say. Hehe. Lets see which dots I can connect.

My guess for the Destroyer of Earths is that it’s loosely based on Wurms.
Even tho in SE now, the Destroyer of Worlds spawns Elites also named Destroyer of Earth that use the Destroyer Troll model.

The Destroyer of Bones MIIIGHT be with a lot of fantasy, based on Dredge? The feet and hunchback give me vibe.

The Destroyer of Deeds maybe a Dryder?

The Destroyer of Flesh could be Charr, based on their legs and tail. (Maaaybe?)

The Destroyer of Hope just looks like a big spider to me.

Destroyer of Hordes could possibly be GW1 Behemoths? The Wurm-like ones?

And beside Ooze, I have no clue what the Destroyer of Lives could be.

But yeah, that’s my donation of food for thoughts.

Eeeehhhh I have really no idea where the elements are supposed to fit in, not only because they’re really, really, REALLY loosely tied to the factions butalsosoundkindasilly.

Tho I have a vaaaague but really not substantial idea? In the Tower of Nightmares, we threw 4 things together and – woops, the result was Arcane. (Or at least the event stated we’re breaking an Arcane-seal from something made in an Arcane forge).
So, fire, earth, air, water, and then there’s that.

Maybe she needs all the components for recreating something like that on a larger scale?

Tho, there was no earth-component. We took a watchwork core. And the spore was well, a spore. Toxic alliance stuff, but not really water-magic related. And the molten alliance metal was cooled down, uhm.

>???
Yeaaaah… I think the elements were thrown in for the sake of suspense and confusion, much like the rest of Makkay’s player-theories.

I can understand Anet loving our speculations, but yanno sometimes I get the vibe that the story is WAY too focused on pushing for these rather than just telling the story with the speculations created naturally as by-product :P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

ElysianEternity.6215:

From the interview we also know that she’s Zojja’s pupil and she claims to have studied Scarlet for months.

LINK.

NOW.

From http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/8145/Guild-Wars-2-Changing-What-It-Means-to-Create-Play-an-MMO.html

Without question, Scarlet’s a compelling character, though not exactly the kind you’d expect to inspire hero worship. Or is she? Johanson also revealed that The Origins of Madness will introduce us to a new character, an Asura prodigy named Taimi who’s unhealthily obsessed with Scarlet. The young Asura’s the ward of well-known golemancer Zojja, and as such, has a way with golems. Actually, she rides one, which is a convenient way to follow Scarlet around Tyria and show up in the Shiverpeaks just in time for the fireworks to begin. It should be interesting, seeing how much trouble Zojja’s ward can get herself into, and what Zojja ends up doing about it…

@Konig des Todes

As you said, menders are Sylvari-healers. Obviously we can’t assume without base that Tyria has anything akin to a Hippocratic Oath. But even without that, a Mender is a person of trust. So her visiting a Mender and telling him while keeping it a secret to anyone else doesn’t seem that implausible to me.

And it could be post experiment, shortly after Ceara became Scarlet (seeing as that’s all a blank page.) The bit from the interview does make it sound like that.

Tho the reason I’m tending to think it’s not, is that by the end of the journal, Ceara/Scarlet only just decided to find a way to face the madness that keeps tormenting and eating away at her.

But by the end of ‘What Scarlet Saw’, she’s already come to the conclusion that her plan will involve nations burning down and whatnot and that she will leave a stamp on whatever in the ‘new world’. Basically it seems like at this point she knows exactly what will happen from there on.

So …the discrepancy just seems weird to me.

@Xukavi

Well I know we can’t dismiss the dragon-painting completely in this theorizing and it would fit the quality of the writing if it turns out to be Modremoth after all.

But errr… she refuses dream AND nightmare. And everything we had figured out so far linked the jungle dragon to nightmare, so why would she give in to the dragon of that if she states she wants to be directed by neither?
Unless it turns out that Modremoth isn’t tied to Nightmare at all, which after all the clues that the lore-forum collected would be surprising.

3 Sylvari walk into a bar.
It’s a salad joke.

How is the political progress of the Dredge? Molecular.

All krait are willing to die for their prophets and the kraiter good of their race.

What will you hear the grawl sing if you ask for the song of their people? Graaaawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heaaaaaaaaal.

Last but not least.

What does Trahearne say?
Commander, to me.

By the law of “no big-impact ambiguous moral actions in GW2”, Objection!

Kinda. They’d prolly kill her if she wasn’t a child. :P lolwat

Apparently she’s been at the Marionette-event in hopes to meet Scarlet, overheard Braham’s name from Rox and then just tagged along. Probably in hopes of meeting Scarlet if she sticks with the band I suppose…
From the interview we also know that she’s Zojja’s pupil and she claims to have studied Scarlet for months.

So yeah, her implementation was kinda “wut?”. I really hope Anet is gonna handle this Asura with more care than the others.

Last I wanna see is Taimi turning into another Asura-deus-ex-machina and happening to have invented exactly what we need to fight Scarlet during her off-screen studies.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Scarlet in the journal is very clearly afraid at the beginning. Very afraid. But does she come off as afraid during What Scarlet Saw? Does Caithe ever mention some form of scaredness? No. She’s carefree to the fullest extent.

Scared people are not carefree. Ceara before the experiment does not match the journal’s mentality.

It’s obviously something Scarlet kept to herself and hid, seeing how it’s a locked away diary. Carefree people also don’t broadcast their fears and looking at the tension between the two, Caithe would be among the last people Ceara/Scarlet would show any weakness towards.

Whether her mentality fits her before or past the experiment based on the short story is difficult to pinpoint, but hey that’s why we’re discussing.

It fits neither Scarlet as she emerged from the experiment from what the short story gave us, nor does it fit her as we have seen her so far during the LS, nor is it 100% a confirmation for her time before the experiment.

She’s not shown fear ever before.
It’s presented as a completely new side to Scarlet – a weakness.

Zaxares.5419:

Yeah, Krait is pretty much out of the question, but I think the Naga (or possibly the Forgotten) may be possible alternatives as a serpentoid race. If the Tengu make their appearance as part of a Canthan expansion, the Naga may also be a possible new race. They were not always hostile to humanity, after all; they only turned to raiding to survive after their traditional homes and hunting grounds were destroyed by the Jade Wind. If the Naga fled from Cantha (just as the Tengu did) during Emperor Usoku’s purges, they probably would not need to retain their raider lifestyle if they managed to settle in rich areas.

I wouldn’t mind playable Kodan (making a Kodan Guardian if they become playable!), although I think they are unlikely due to the fact that Kodan are very similar to Norn in terms of gaming clichés (they are both big, physically powerful arctic-dwelling races), which means they’d have trouble standing out on their own.

Woops, I didn’t see that was a reply to my post :p

And Krait possibly aren’t that much out of question anymore.
Emphasis on ‘possibly’.
With the direction the LS has taken, a Krait-civil war as consequence of the failure that was the Tower of Nightmares would open up possibilities. (Actually, their society slithering away without any consequences is really bothersome and unbelievable…)
You could either have an even more vicious Krait-faction that actively hunts down landdwelling races to revenge their killed ‘Prophet’…
…or you could have a faction of Krait that is devastated by their first major defeat and being lied at by their priesthood not only about the tower but also for generations about their whole religion, thus revolting against the Oratuss.

They have a ridiculous amount of possible character customization and save for shooting animations that are fairly simple to do, they already have all underwater battle animations covered.

So lore aside, the only hurdle is how to animate them jumping (not only as in snakes leaping but considering their tails and hitboxes when doing JPs), armor (well for foot armor it could wrap around their tail, kinda like Charr-foot armor does too around their feet, but what are the chances of Anet bothering that much again?) aaand certain skills that involve acrobatic jumping or kicking. (Which probably would take custom animation and that might be too much effort)

I know they’re the black-hat race, but for all we know they could simply be kept as black-hat race so it can change one day.
And that for a change REALLY would put the ‘living’ in ‘living story’.

Aaaand for the Kodan. There’s that story of a Kodan-tribe that went lost which the Kodan assume refer to the Norn. But hey what if it turned out that the lost Kodan tribe settled in the Woodland Cascades and now there’s some more variations of fur-coats akin to other bears there? Cue reunion and troublesome faction?
I’m just spouting vague ideas but man how I’d love for that to happen. :P