Guild Wars 2

Wasn’t there at the end of Flame and Frost a Flame-legionnaire who dismissed the threat of dragons? (Something along the lines of ‘blahblah yeah you go play with your dragons we’ll be here long afterwards’ blahblah or so?)
Doesn’t seem unlikely to me that she either revealed to the alliances the the entity she saw or at least a way to counter the dragons’ dangers.

Since the journal says she saw a mender and the experiment turned her into Scarlet
(doubt she’d go see a Mender as Scarlet considering how the journal is written in a more ‘Ceara’ like fashion), it does strike me as if the experiment was merely the breaking point for everything.

As if she was frightened and terrified of the entity that harassed her all along as Ceara when, but later Omadd’s experiment finally allowed her to see it for what it really is. (or perhaps she thinks she does but it is just using her)

So IMO her journal was written before the experiment. She saw the entity twice on two different occasions, once as Ceara during her nightmares when it kept breaking her defenses and trying to manipulate her and the other time when she delved into the ‘Eternal Alchemy’.

Whatever that entity is, it has been trying to control her ‘destiny’ as well. So maybe the whole deal with the experiment and her insisting on her free will is that she’s struggling not only against the Dream-or-Nightmare ‘destiny’ by the Pale tree, but also against the entity which tries to manipulate her into destruction. (Which might be a losing battle?)

Also the trailer still might have a clue. There’s that ‘mysterious’ voice and while it has been dismissed as merely a mysterious voice not belonging to anyone in particular, the script itself could hint to something.
The part that bugs me is the “She must succeed at all costs /even/ if she has to destroy every last of you.”

Even makes it sound like there’s an alternative.
Could be that destroying us isn’t absolutely necessary to her plan (or the plan of the entity?) and that we just ‘happen’ to be in the way of her plans although we are not the primary target.
Or that we are the real test-subjects and she is merely testing Tyria’s defenders, not her weapons. Could that tie to the poem’s ‘Sometimes to change you have to destroy’?
But these thoughts don’t lead me to anywhere.

I feel like we’re still missing important unreleased puzzle-pieces.
Weeeeeell, lets see what’ll happen in 2 weeks.

BrunoBRS.5178:

my argument against killing off a character for emotional impact:

it’s been used to death (pun intended) on GW2 lore, it’s getting predictable. every single novel requires one token death and one protagonist death. the personal story has a body count that rivals private ryan.

it’s like ANet just reaches a point where they decide they don’t know what to do with a character, so they kill them. so no, i don’t want yet another cheap death for fake emotional struggle. try developing a character without killing them.

That’s my sentiment on the whole “kill x off”-deal as well.

Also there’s been tons and tons of threads in the now archived personal-story forum about people getting frustrated at the last chunk of story in Orr because underdeveloped and throw-away characters died to the left and right with no emotional impact whatsoever. (Or in some cases, it required several playthroughs to even get an idea of why we should care and who just died which I’m certain not too many people bother with. ) So I really think GW2 has enough “woe is me my xxx died”.

Can’t say I’m not disappointed and confused.

Most questions from the other language forums (hooray for being multilingual!) actually were about juicy Lore-facts (Lord Odran, more about the Largos, the strange shaped tree-faces we asked about as well, Livia, new Khan-Ur, fate of the old GW1 cast, the Mursaats/Lazarus’ fate, Dhuum, White mantle, etc)

So it really /does/ feel like you avoided the interesting parts.

Beside some more info on the Ogres and more details about the Centaurs and confirmation on the Whispers-globe, it feels like the rest of the answers were uhm …foreseeable? Kinda obvious? Definitely not what most people were hoping to hear?

Also I haven’t seen anyone in the Spanish, French or German forum ask the LS-development-questions…(?)

Sooo, with that feeling of disappointment lingering, I second Konig’s suggestion of revisiting the questions in the thread if another Lore Q&A comes up.

Or maybe just note them dully somewhere for any possible future blog-posts about Lore or so.
(We can hope, yes?)

Heh.

1. Kodan
2. Krait
3. Tengu

I know Largos are more likely than Kodan and and even more so than Krait, but this is about favorites yeah? :P

Wow, kinda exciting to see Angel here. c:<

First of all I can only repeat what the fellow ‘lorehounds’ already said – thank you a lot for taking your time to have a chat with us! You can imagine that we’re just as excited and giddy about reading your replies as you’re about our speculations. c:

And no worries about the theories being shot down – that’s why they’re theories. Gathering all the pieces in the game and weaving something together that might be possible is still incredibly fun. Sometimes I have ideas that I know have an incredible unlikelihood to occur in canon – yet I love taking these puzzle-pieces and think of “what if”s that would still make sense or would be fun (or funny).

I don’t wanna bombard you with lore-questions at the moment (gonna give the others a chance! besides I had a lot of them posted in the other thread anyway), tho I wanna bring up something else as fellow writer. I’m well aware that you seem to work with a lot of restrictions, time- and design-wise.

And it’s easy to forget and things being rushed with so many characters and plots being made – but always keep in mind for ingame-stories: Show, don’t tell! Not just in reference to major-characters like Scarlet who you got enough feedback for concerning this, or other future named LS-characters. But also for unnamed ones!

One really disappointing instance was the end of “the Nightmare Unveiled.” Long story short, it was the first time we met a Krait Oratuss ingame and you guys at Anet even went as far as giving him a completely new model. That was really awesome, no doubt!
But after we’ve been giving a perfect demonstration of show-don’t-tell about the game-mechanics of the toxic spores, the rest was …well, as if you tried to do the complete opposite with the Oratuss’ introduction.

He just spawns in our face out of nowhere, telling us the whole plan. New Alliance! Seizing the heavens with their help! Prophets returning! KRAIT RULING THE WORLD! AND YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING SO I’LL TELL YOU LIKE A GOOD VILLAIN WOULD! YIPPIE!

Like…_ wait what_. I have absolutely /no idea/ what restrictions programmers, writers and designers face.

But instead of having the sly and cunning Oratuss shove us their master plan in our face, would it have taken that much more resources to have him instead /preach/ to the Krait that were going to spawn anyway and outline the plan for /them/ with some Courtiers in the background, possibly idle-rambling about it to show some friction between the two factions? And then have the Toxic Alliance notice Kasmeer and Jory who were hiding and observing them? And cue the event?

It would have been a great opportunity to show how the priesthood manipulates the krait – and if it had been shown how they were convinced by their own leaders, the Toxic Alliance itself would seem less doubtful as result and all in all we’d also have a demonstration of how krait-society functions.

I know it seems nitpicky, but as the small chatter at Thunderidge which so many of us (and me included) loved proved, little things can convey a big message!

So, rather than a rant I’d just like my wall of text-example to be a friendly reminder to keep in the back of your heads when introducing and writing especially now that you can do some of the scripting yourselves. ;)

P.S.: 1+ for bringing back the short stories. Even if it’s “meh” that they’re outside of the game, the writing itself is truly beautiful and I enjoy it a lot. :P

Question 2: It was confirmed Naga are unrelated to the Krait and Forgotten.

I’d like to say that there was never any relation between Naga and Krait (or lack thereof) explained.

Yep, I got it mixed up with an old lore discussion which leaned towards Krait and Naga being unrelated as well. 2manysnakes. But yeah you’re right, it was Naga and Forgotten being confirmed to have no relation. So it boils down to whether the Krait are related to the other serpentine races at all.

Also here I’d like to say thanks and props for making sure new lore questions will be answered Konig. C;

Looking back at what I wrote earlier, I’m realizing that some of my questions look a bit clustered and lengthy because they’re plastered with examples and explanations.

That being said, the devs of course don’t need to reply to any specific examples I mentioned – answering the general question if they should pick any of mine at all is enough. :p

-rubs hands- Ok, here it goes. 8D

Question1: What is the story behind the giant wood-like stone structures resembling faces seen in some places in Tyria, as example where the battle against the Giant Jungle Wurm-World boss in Caledon Forest takes place? Is there any lore behind them at all or are they merely there to look spooky?

Question 2: It was confirmed Naga are unrelated to the Krait and Forgotten. Is there any relation between Krait and Forgotten? Or are can they be confirmed as unrelated as well? And with it being revealed that Forgotten precede the human Gods, why did they become their servants? Or was that only a splinter-faction of them that we met? :p

Question 3: The karka, the largos and the krait all lived in the depths of the Unending Oceans. What is their relation to each other? We know the krait were never ‘officially beaten’ back then and thus considered themselves superior to all other races, but in the game we see a few largos talking about killing them as if they could do so easily. The karka adults have their impenetrable shells, making them incredibly difficult to kill. Did they merely live far apart in the ocean deeps or did the 3 deep-sea races actually confront each other? How did the krait reign superior or did they only because of their sheer number?

Question 4: Will there be more living stories centered and continuing events of the world? Like will we ever see the Dredge Revolution succeeding or failing and the aftermath? Will we ever see the consequences of Ulgoth’s fall? Will the centaurs be forced to surrender and hearts updated on that? Will the Inquest ever suffer the ‘firestorm’ in the council that Zojja mentioned at the end of the CoE-story?

Question 5: Same question about the living story itself but another focus – rather than adding more and more new stories, will we ever see the consequences of the alliances?
One main-gripe about the Living Story so far was how Scarlet deems her alliance ‘minions’ and that’s all they are which makes them incredibly flat and also ‘nerfs’ them as individual villains. So can they be expanded on?

As in questions like, how does the Molten Alliance sit with the other Dredge factions? What now of the Flame legion? What will the splinter-faction of the Nightmare Court do with the knowledge gained on how to grow a Tower of Nightmares and spores? Shouldn’t the krait backlash at Scarlet for being deceived and shouldn’t with 3 of their Oratuss being proven wrong about their prophet and their first proper defeat cause some doubt of their religion among them?

Question 6: Who invented the lost scrolls? What exactly is the spell? We only know the Six hid them. A spell powerful enough to sink an entire peninsula is on par with the doing of an Elder Dragon.

Last but not least: Why do krait have nipples and navels? :P (Heck, the Caledon’s krait witch even has boobies. The other females seemingly don’t tho.) They lay eggs. And they don’t seem to do it the shark-way.

@Konig Des Todes

You mean Elysian Tail? Heh. Nah, never played that one. Tho on the username side-note I keep spelling Konig as König and going back to correcting. :p

Tho for the love of God, I hope it’s not the dragon-champion theory. Though I’m not sure either what she could have seen. Feels like Anet didn’t leave us any clues to it at all for the sake of an ‘unpredictable’ reveal. There’s so much mystery about the Dream and why and how the Pale Tree links to the Mists. It has to be something better than “sURPRISE!!!!!!! WE’VE BEEN ALL DRAGON MINIONS FROM THE START -MAD GIGGLING”

But I don’t think it’s Malyck as character she knows of. I dare to say he himself isn’t “important enough” and that linking a such easily missed yet interesting character to the LS is way too farfetched considering the writing so far.

Tho maybe she’s seen the dreamless Pale Tree he originated from itself – which too would somewhat shatter the Pale Tree’s image of “deity-like entity and mother of all Sylvari” which she hated that much for other Sylvari and possibly make more wary of the tree.

Tho what do you think she could use as template for her ‘own’ hybrid-sylvari if she did burn down the tree and recreated them herself? A dragon? Herself?

Also another thought – could she possibly force the Pale Tree to change which in turn would alter the Sylvari and be a big slap to her concerning her deity-like position and the whole deal about destiny? (Underground base under the roots which have been said to ‘’reach into the mists?’’) Like, could the Pale Tree defend herself if the template (humans) was tampered with and changed to something else by an outer force?

Wow, okay lets see what’s all there and supposed to be explained in and link together in the final arc.

Summary:
Mysterious probes that are supposed to /find/ something
The fused Molten Alliance Tech and Azurite
Aetherblades Tech
Toxic Spores and the hallucinations they cause
Knowledge how to create Sylvari-kittenizations / “The Toxic hybrid”
The Leylines
“Islands” she was sighted at
Scarlet showing an interest in the Mists
“What Scarlet saw”
An incoming assault on LA
Scarlet’s disdain of predetermined destiny and the Dream and Pale Tree as whole
Caithe’s secret
_____________________

And now another poem on a metronome.
Metronomes usually represent a beat or pulse.
Probably the thumpers, no doubt.

Wipe all resistance from your mind
There’s a secret deep below to find
If you’d only seen the things I’ve seen
You’d wake up screaming from The Dream

Personally I have the feeling this part as whole addresses the Sylvari. The secret being “what she saw”. “Wipe all resistance from your mind” towards her ideology and the “truth” and “grand design”.

This next part will sting, but it brings me joy
Sometimes to change you must destroy.

Change the Sylvari…?

Also, while checking out the Asura gates in LA I realized something – the only one who fits the view of the destroyed one we have been shown is the Gate leading to the Grove.
The others don’t line up or have parts of LA in their view.

The Tyria will burn part is just her craziness and chaos shenanigans.

Khisanth.2948:

There is actually already an event like this in the game although it doesn’t give anything particular at the end.

Then there was the stuff for getting the 2012 Halloween back piece.

Yep exactly, something along the lines of the old Halloween event. But more specific to zones of the same or lower level-ranges of the player and something easier to discover through playing and exploring and simply stumble upon rather than getting an ingame mail about it.

And with the forum-limit I forgot to put – if there’s an issue with how to handle the different classes unlocking skills from the same skill-quest, here’s 1 more idea:

Every Vet has 1 new skill of each class to offer.
But in battle the Vet’s profession changes depending on the class of the player who triggered the event. So if a Mesmer spawned the Vet, it’d use Mesmer-skills + the new mesmer skill. If a Necro spawned the Vet, it’d use Necro-skills + the new necro skill.
If other people with the capture-item of different classes participate and beat it, they still unlock the respective skill of that Vet for their own class.

@Konig des Todes

Woops, yeah wrong link. Fail-copy paste. Accidently copied the link of where the ad leads to instead of the link of the video itself. This thread sure isn’t gonna run low on my airheadedness any time soon.

Tho when I said model, I meant new model file. As in 3D model. Not new series of Asura gates if there’s a misunderstanding here. :p

And yep, agreed – with all the foreshadowing about LA being attacked anyway and how devastating this is supposed to be, the gate hub is the first that comes to mind when seeing this shot. If the LA-thing wasn’t pushing it, an unknown Inquest-location might also have fit. But looks like LA’s once more evil’s pinata.

I know LA’s sky has more colors than the Dreamer can shoot. Tho still what bothers me about it (beside that its color is SCARLET. How punny) is the moon. It’s a little too much in focus. It could be for the sake of mystery or showing the gate is completely broken but…idk how to explain. Feels weird.

I’m very curious about and excited for the next release but in a way also afraid.

If the LS taught me one thing so far, it’s that the initial release of an arc never seems to make sense until the next one clears up on it. (And until now some things are still hard to swallow even with loads of benefits of doubts.)

ColinJohanson.2394:
What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

Iiii’m not sure about PVP or WvW, but for PVE I had an idea.
Tho it may require a Skill-quest tab like the personal story one.

How about linking the acquisition of new skills to exploration and vet-hunts? Like, giving the POIs some significance? (Not all ofc, only some of them.) As we know Points of Interests now, they’re merely hints to GW1 lore or specific unusual locations one needs to visit for map completion.

A scavenger-quest starting at a POI where a new interactable object or NPC may be (which newer members would come across while exploring the map anyway and not be highlighted on the map itself as this would ruin the immersion). This NPC or object explains a bit of juicy lore we don’t know yet related to the POI or a story that recently occurred there and mention a monster or whatever that used a skill never seen before or a person using a long forgotten technique, creative liberty here .

The “skill never seen before” could be written in red to highlight it is something important and new, so newbies get the hint. (if that doesn’t suffice, cue hint-window about new skills being unlockable through exploration)
Also, stories and lore-bits tied to it would definitely be interesting to discover as well, since GW2 got a hell lot of mysterious places.

An example for a quest-chain: To find the Elite/Veteran, one has to acquire an item first and the clue to the location of this item is provided by the NPC/object in form of a riddle, puzzle or just a description of the possible location depending on the individual quest.

What we search for doesn’t necessarily have to lay around overworld guarded by tons of regular mobs and a vet in a cave. It could be in the hands of a NPC now. Or a mob if you can make it interesting enough, like with the Skillpoint challenge of the evil Raven Shaman in the Snowden Drifts! And the searched for NPC shouldn’t be highlighted for convenience either, that’s what the hints by the quest-giver object/NPC are for. It can be in possession of one of the many NPCs in a city, at an outpost or even at the orders, depending on the zone the initial POI was at (so that a lvl-10 chara doesn’t need to break their head about how to visit the Whispers HQ as example). Key-word exploration!

Now after acquiring the item, it reveals a bit more info on what or who we’re hunting, but we find out it’s unfortunately incomplete. If it’s notes, pages could be missing that need to be found. If it’s another…thing, we might need to gather materials to fix it depending on where the quest started (10 Iron Ore and 10 Soft Wood for a lvl 20 zone as example). Or we might need to interact with different overworld objects or more NPCs, like recovering data crystals from an inquest hideout. Basically everything overworld, giving players still the chance to help each other without it turning into a zerg-fest.

More steps can go in here depending on how long it’s supposed to be and yanno. Pretty sho from here on the devs could think of what they can do with their tools.

At the end of this part the gained items would be transformed into something akin to the capture signet of GW1, specifically for that one quest/mob. Except it’s a soulbound trophy item instead.

But what about the Veteran/Elite? Well, the person at this quest-step simply interacts with something at the POI or other place, wherever the quest leads and the Veteran spawns! However, only people who have the capture-item can spawn the Veteran/Elite/whatever scales with people around it.

The spawned Veteran would be an open world event, but only the people with the item from the quests before get the skill. Other people who contribute get normal DE-awards. Afterwards the item disappears and you got the new skill! Woo! (The cooldown to spawn it can be like 2 minutes. Since it’s only an Elite/a Vet, no worries about people camping and farming it either.)

I know not everyone would be too fond of this kind of quests, but some may like it.

However, I’m surprised because Anet already had an open world event that tied to a “quest” before. PS Spoiler. The personal story quest "Fixing the Blame" ends with us finding Syska's body in the overworld. When the player with the quest interacts with her corpse, it triggers an open world event. After the mesmer minions are defeated, the character with the personal story quest moves on to the next story quest. Meanwhile for anyone else it's just a normal DE.
Also this whole personal story-quest was stretching across all of Tyria instead of being restricted to a single zone, which actually makes a good base-template for other scavenger-like and hunting-quests.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

-snip-

GW3 confirmed, only playable race: Trahearne, only profession: Necromancer, only weapon: Caladbolg, only available map: Orr, also featuring Destiny’s Trahearne as your mentors and the Elder Trahearnes as Trahearnia’s primary threat

Alas, after today’s droplets of information the Ring of Fire-theory looks rather debunked and the Orr one less likely as well – the summary of the new GW2-ad trailer shows a broken Asura-Gate and an unactivated one, and a red night sky and the moon at the end.

https://register.guildwars2.com/en/welcome/shatterer?cid=28:1::::NA:18::&gclid=CMiioI3P67sCFYlAMgod_SsA7Q"

(Note, this broken Asura-Gate model is completely new and has been added in the recent Edge of the Mists-beta update according to the_shaman on twitter.)

…or is it the moon? Ambiguous zooming that might as well be random, dundundun. Lets hope it’s not actually really a death-star, like the developers jokingly called it in the new interview on GuildMag. :P

@Konig des Todes

We’ve never actually seen her do anything in person outside of Clockwork Chaos and the Invasions herself at all. :p Tho there’s her little lab in the tower with the components so while she may have not used them so far herself, we know at least that she is still working towards something with all the tech.

With all the backlash that happened and how Anet is advertising it as a final showdown and how it’s more or less stated in their 2013 review that the question about what she plans with what she’s gained will be answered, my gut-feeling is pretty positive on the spores, the molten fusions and the aetherblade tech making a comeback soon.

And about the conjunction. I’m not sure. The only ‘conjunction’ we’ve seen was what we got out of her forge and blew up the tower. The MA-scrap metal was fresh out of a coolant box tho. No question we’ll see all her tech thrown together into /something/ at the end. But I feel like we’re also likely to see each component individually return before that.

And I was talking strictly about “what if heat/fire because emergency button.” For the pollinating, it does make a lot of sense if it just needs heat to function but it can’t take too much. Said that’s something I can get behind. :p

However, if it’s intended as emergency button it seems kinda wonky and strange. You’d think a “genius” would think about an emergency button that wouldn’t be among the first things someone else would think of, like her pass-phrase for the Twisted Nightmares. On the other hand that’s a direct result of her carelessness and part of her plan backfiring because of her own worst trait is actually… well exactly what she needs as character. Among the 100 other things she needs, like more exposition, etc in general.

@Xulavi

I don’t think so. Whatever she is looking for seems to be something that hasn’t been discovered (or rediscovered) by the other races yet.
Besides she has acquired the Krait Obelisk shards, which we know from their energy readings are ‘comparable’ to the Bloodstones. No clue to which extent, but that’s what we got. So unless she needed huge amounts of untainted magic in specific, I don’t think she would be tracking the Bloodstones at all.

Kain Francois.4328:

You know Kormir rules over the Realm of Torment now, right?

….. Oh…. My… God….. Scarlet is trying to unleash a bigger evil!

SCARLET IS TRYING TO UNLEASH KORMIR!!!!!

RUN FOR THE HILLS, KORMIR IS BACK! AAAAAAAA

Okay, okay I had to giggle. That one was good, ahaha.

Obligatory Crackpot fan-fic theory a-go-go:
Turns out Scarlet chose the redeemed Realm of Torment in order to replicate the events of Abaddon’s fall! By amassing magic from all of Tyria’s leylines with her mysterious probes, she hopes to recreate something on the level of divine magic
TO BECOME
A
~~GOD~~
but at the end of the chapter, after a final boss battle between the player character and her, in the nick of time, just before the concentrated magic can explode or Scarlet can claim it – a portal appears! And from it emerges the one and only, Trahearne. “Commander, to me.” He speaks as he uses the player character’s face as spring-board to dive into the energy.
And this marks not only the hour of a new deity’s creation, but also the hour of the Flame Legion accepting females, Mai Trin’s text being updated, Quaggans overrunning the Black Lion Trading Company for Plagiarism, Caudecus being appointed Krait-Oratuss and Zhaitan turning around in his open-air grave. Scarlet trips and dies off-screen from head-trauma. Trahearne disappears from Tyria as he high-fives Kormir and a new kind of Pale Tree emerges where this battle occurred. This tree would be known to future generations simply as ‘Trahearne’ in honor of, well, Trahearne and all Sylvari produced by it are Kormir look-alikes who live by his words: “this won’t end well”.
It is the dawn of a new era.

…and with that back to the more srs discussion. lD

@Konig Des Todes

The need of heat for the spores to pollinate is a plausible and other interesting theory.
As is the emergency-button one. We know she had a deactivation-phrase for the Watchwork knights after all.

Tho I can’t help but feeling that fire of all things as emergency button would be a little too obvious. Also now that we found out they’re inflammable, they would be pretty useless unless she did work more on them since we found out how to get rid of them easily. Easily and in large quantities. Then again it’d be also nice seeing Scarlet’s carelessness bite her in the butt. :p

Sorry for that typo. Isles, Islands, Island. I always get that mixed up, heh. You’ll have a lot to nitpick here I’m afraid.

Tho I never said they could not refer to the Mists themselves! Just that the islands need to be connected to the Mists. And the islands being in Tyria was of course the first thing that comes to mind because it’d be easier to enter the Mists from Tyria than find an explanation for how she got there and how we can get there if the islands were in the Mists. (And I’m not so sure about the Order of Whispers scouting the Mists either)

It could be islands in Tyria that have a portal to the Mists. Or it could be islands in the Mists that have a portal to Tyria. After all the new wvw map has been brought up as possibility too.

Tho if we assume the islands are the same kind as our fractal-like islands, it’d still lead us to the question /how/ she could have entered the Mists. (On that note, the Mists themselves might fit the ‘core of tyria’ quote in a way too)

We could go a step further and speculate that she /somehow/ pulled a Dessa, since the Son of Svanir’s way doesn’t seem so likely as it required a Havroun.

(And at this point, actually imagine if she did not just pull a Dessa but also ended up stuck in a fractal and we could kill her over and over again as we please in canon. 8D …sorryIjusthadto.)

Mayyybe you’re right on the spores. Guess I should have explained my train of thoughts there. :p

The way I interpreted it, is that the spore we found was a WIP with heat being the only thing she hadn’t covered yet. Since she was working on making them overall more resistant but it even reacted to your body-warmth, it felt rather unfinished and abandoned. (Also a bit weird that she’d put effort into making them tougher to the point metal-sickles don’t work on them, yet it can be easily destroyed with a torch without unleashing toxin or any other negative side-effects.)
That’s why I assumed she was in the progress of making them heat-resistant as well – exactly because they are pathetically and obviously flammable to the point they may as well not have been made physically tougher at all.
But it’s also totally possible that she just let them vulnerable to heat on purpose or just didn’t care which fits her attitude and would legit debunk the theory.

But while what you’ve said is definitely true for all other Sylvari, Scarlet is pretty much the exception about that isn’t she? With her assuming she saw the Eternal Alchemy and how all things tie together in some grand design, if she thinks she saw something about how the human Gods fit into “everything” she might as well have found something of interest there.

Tho, what exactly she wants there – I have no clue. Not the foggiest one. Not like I have any clue what she would want or could do with the Mists in general.

The Krait Obelisks one is strange to figure out. Heck, for all we know she could have been to the DSD’s territory in an airship and just broken off shards of an Obelisk, seeing as they reach from the ocean-ground to far above the waves. They also might have washed ashore, but where? So, no clue how she got them – just that she got them somewhere around the Unending Ocean.

And hey, seeing the ritual undone and how much it would impact the Sylvari would actually be really interesting. As would be her setting up a base right under the Pact’s nose, similarly how the Molten Alliance had their facility hidden underground or how the Aetherblades had a hideout right outside of Lion’s Arch.

But gotta keep in mind that the Order of Whispers are the one who sighted her and that they’re part of the Pact. If they were aware she was going to set up camp there, they wouldn’t keep it a secret to themselves as it would directly concern the Pact. A lot.

And Orr doesn’t connect much to the Mists either. Except when the Gods first arrived there but that’s pretty loose. Whatever island is referred to must have a direct way to enter (or at least peek into) them.

I’d actually love a LS with primary focus on Orr, but I’m afraid the only reason we’re seeing thumpers in Orr now is because Anet finally wrapped their head around the idea of including it in the LS at all.
(One could also theorize that with this LS/the Scarlet arc a dragon-arc follows and Orr would finally be free for LS-purposes, since the personal story’s end would be pushed forward to elsewhere :p We’re probably getting another LS-arc, but hey one can dream .)

From the Order of Whispers NPC at Thunderidge we know Scarlet has been seen around the “isles” and that she has shown interest in the Mists.

Now, most theories about what isles could be meant pointed to the sunken battle isles and possible the new WvW Map.

However, what if she has been seen around the Fire Isles, also known as Ring of Fire instead? Could she be looking for a way to access the Foundry of Failed Creations?
With that in mind and looking at what she’s gained from all the previous alliances, what could she be up to? Could the bloodstones finally make a comeback to GW2? Could she be trying to make titans of her own there?

Possible points for that theory
- Fire Isles. They connect to the Mists, specifically the Realm of Torment. Fits the description nicely. Also makes a defensible location, perfect for a base.
- We know Scarlet has been to the Unending Ocean before, seeing as she somehow “magically” obtained pieces of a Krait Obelisk. That’s just south of the Ring of Fire.
- “Rock Tyria to its core”. Well, kinda. Not really. Might fit, because Volcano.
- She tries to make the spores more heat-resistant, if I don’t remember it wrong.
- More of another theory, but if we had gotten the Abaddon fractal instead of the Thaumanova one, we could have seen the battle and still yet foreshadowing to the next LS installment since the Realm of Torment was Abaddon’s prison.

Possible points against that theory
- Well, there’s really nothing that comes to mind why Scarlet would be interested in the Realm of Torment of all things. Or how Azurite, the spores she obtained, or anything would tie together.
- No clear link between Thaumanova, the anomaly and dragon energy to this either.
- Only one alliance to fight there would make sense, namely the Aetherblades. (Or at least I’d be shuddering at the thought of the Molten and Toxic Alliance still being used as minions type A and B after what’s happened so far. Unless we fight their hallucinations like we did in the tower I suppose.)
- No clue what the mysterious probes might accomplish either. Forcing the door open? Idk.

I’m feeling like I’m missing a piece. Tho, I do find the possibility of her base being set up in a new zone with that much potential fairly intriguing. :p

I brought up this problem in another thread (the Ossuary of the Unquiet dead one) which was focused on a specific mission and a dev replied with a comment about that specific problem and the general problem behind this issue might have been overlooked due to that.

Probably it’s just cuz of the festivities that no one replied yet. Still, since this strings throughout the whole personal story I feel this needs general addressing.

Anywayyys.

Problem? Abominations. And the crazy frenzy stacking. I know there’s a few ways to avoid certain death by an incoming huge sewed pile of limbs, be it avoiding their attacks 4 times to reset their frenzy or killing them before they reach 25 stacks.

And by lvl 7x from dev-perspective (judging by the comment in the other thread) a player should have figured out somewhat how to kite one of them. I’m aware these ones are not made to be facetanked.

So, the problem? Well, it’s not one single abomination in a single mission. It’s not only personal quests in Orr either. I’d be totally fine with it if it was only Abominations in Orr.

But the crazy Frenzy-stacking occurs with every regular Abomination mob. In fact, it occurs during early personal story steps as well as in a few places overworld that are far from Orr.

And the problem with those personal story quests is that you’re seldom alone. There’s almost always a big group of NPCs that cannot dodge or evade attacks and therefore gives the Abominations freebies of frenzy in a single sweep. And if that’s not frustrating, well make it multiple abominations.

The most ridiculous example I’ve experienced while playing an alt is in the screenshot below, of the mission “Whispers of Vengeance” (28). While there’s a good number of frustrating instances with Abominations like the quest “Shell Shock” as another example, this one stood out because of how low-level it was and yet how the whole instance was crawling with Risen Abominations.

There were a dozen Abominations I sneaked by on my way (in good Order of Whispers fashion :P), but even so there are about 5 Abominations circling the Priory team and a lot of normal Risen accompany them which makes kiting and luring them almost impossible and definitely more frustrating than it needs to be since they enlarge the aggro-circle.

I’d be incredibly thankful if Anet looked into this and could try to separate the Risen Abominations that are difficult on purpose from the ones players encounter early on or in mass. And I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one appreciating that. :>

I’m usually not posting on the forums, but this problem caught my attention too.

I see a dev replied to this thread and I feel the need to address the issue and hope they can look into this because it’s not only this one quest and also not just a question of level.

All Abominations have the 25-frenzy stack problem going on, in and outside of the personal story.

That also includes lower level quests like “Defending the Keep” (lvl 26, charr).

However it becomes the most apparent (and frustrating) in quests with multiple Abominations like “A light in the darkness” which is lvl 55, The battle of Claw island (50) and Retribution (60), Shell Shock (64) and a couple of others I cannot recall right now. But it’s thumb-estimate pretty much every regular Abomination mob.

The 25-frenzy stack problem with the abomination happens also overworld in places like the southern swamps in the Gendarran fields and in Lychmire in Kessex Hills which are lower level areas.

So the problem lies with the Abominations themselves, not the individual quests. I hope the devs can look into this and fix it. (…unless they really intended this to be this way).