Except it rather would because you’d have to be “no longer a god” when in the open world, and all future content – presuming such wouldn’t be the finale of GW2 – would be trivial or suffer from the Dragonball Z complex of having to up the ante to previously shown-to-be-insane levels.
In other words, there is no difference between player character becoming a god in GW1 as there is in GW2.
And if Anet ever hopes to have another sequel, having a nameless, genderless, raceless god would just be silly.
Even after reading all the very informed posts here, I still can’t grasp the concept of the Mursaat actually rushing themselves into battle and dying. Could the Titans really track them so well inside the mists?
It is possibel that the mursaat weren’t able to leave the world of Tyria during Prophecies – if they could, why wouldn’t they instead of trying to keep the door closed? Furthermore, Scholar Yissa states that they used “powerful magic” – with magic being drained into the Elder Dragons and the Bloodstone, maybe that powerful magic wasn’t accessible at the time.
Unless, of course, the titans were chasing them across the Mists and Tyria was the only known safe haven for them from the titans. I find that a bit doubtful, however, given how the titans are most likely either largely just a natural occurrence of tormented souls or can only come to be from the ritual that made those in the Realm of Torment – and they were only in large numbers in the Realm of Torment due to The Fury creating them.
Why even come back after their first dragon rise? What is there in Tyria that was so precious to them, if they were scared enough to run away in the first place?
My theory is, given how when they finally returned they established themselves as gods to humans, that the mursaat returned to Tyria in order to rule the races.
Further, other words may not have (as much) magic like Tyria does – the little hints and lore we have on the human homeworld is that it was highly lacking in magic. Other worlds may be the same, making Tyria unique.
Hmm, this gives me a thought: What if there are mursaat out in the Mists incapable of returning to Tyria due to lack of magic, and their purpose for returning was to gather enough magic to bring the other mursaat back to Tyria (thus why they were all focused on the Bloodstones and still are)? Maybe Lazarus’ “noble plan” is to bring back the mursaat – either in resurrection, or what remains of his people out in another world?
Risen aren’t traditional undead – or really undead at all. They just look undead, so the uneducated-on-the-matter Tyrians (read: nearly everyone) simply call them undead.
Further, we know that full body undeads are possible and not done by “bad necromancy” alone, and do not necessarily need a soul. Intelligent and independent undead seem to require souls to animate them. But that’s not what Verata or other “evil necromancers” did. Only Joko and Khilrbon are known to have enslaved souls in a negative fashion. Note: Khilbron was still treated as a good guy despite our characters seeing him using the souls of fallen enemies to do his bidding.
It’s less of “how they make minions” that define good and bad, but more of “what they do” – Oberan and Verata both killed people for their experiments, and that made them bad people, not them having better, sustained, minions.
Nah, it was stated that they’re just little fun things Josh added in here and there. No significance or plan for them.
It’s like an artist putting his signature on the bottom of a painting, really.
I don’t get why everyone’s go-to answer is fractals. “Make fractals of the rest of Season 1” “make fractals of old events”.
It just doesn’t work that way. They’re completely different formats.
And dungeons wouldn’t have to change at all. They’re instanced! Saying that is like complaining that the personal story still deals with Zhaitan. And why would a new player play HoT story instead of Zhaitan? You’re skipping plots, and it would make no sense for old players to renew their status so that it works for new players, else you’re making two plots one for new folks and one for old while removing content. Why would you do that?
I think ArenaNet has learned that players do not like content being removed. And from a design perspective it makes no sense either – you’re removing playable content from your playerbase, restricting what they can do.
3. No, I remember pretty well how Anet was promising even home invasion when maps were not defended by players and how hyped I was. But they had to backpeddle for the sake of keeping the game running, the chain events were installed to keep it as an illusion of the idea.
I am fairly certain you blew your expectations out of proportion.
Those home invasions when maps were not defended?
Their prime example is in game:
Liberate Shaemoor Garrison from the Tamini invaders
This is an event that only happens if players do not do preceding defense events and the event fails.
You can see it this way with the maps stuck in time, but I don´t.
How can you argue this with a straight face when ever release map talks about Zhaitan still being alive, how there are talks of Gaheron being alive in Plains of Ashford, Diessa, and Iron Marches, and how talks of Mordremoth being alive in HoT maps.
The only time we ever have an update to a map’s timeline is where the LW is directly involved, and even then they rarely alter things to fit that so it can’t even be said to be the whole map.
If Anet would show that they are still majorly concerned about the consistency, maps stuck in time would be upgraded sometimes and the story would be transfered into a format akin to ls2, the newest story replacing the last one for new players.
LS2 doesn’t have any new story replacing and old one… so I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.
Anet cannot have the open world change by player progress because it is open world and persistent – it simply would be a technological mess to do that unless you separate playerbase by their story progress. But doing that is something ArenaNet is actively trying to avoid because they don’t want their playerbase to be spread out – or to make their dat so unbelievably large as to have a copy of every map at every timeframe.
would also be akin to the idea that the world is really living and dynamic how Anet initially promised but was forced to alredy backpeddle before release. But tihs is probably a pipe dream of me you can only except to see in Eve online.
Their promised dynamic world was not about the progression of story but the success and failure of events. Which they actually did implement. You’re just taking things out of proportion.
Kssex Hills is the example of a map well tended over the years in my opinion. It is also stuck now after ls2 was over, but it is miles ahead of Caledon for example where Zhaitans forces still stay in front of the home door.
And it would make no sense to a new player about the urgency of Zhaitan to sylvari when they don’t see the risen in the open world.
If I was an evil overlord with an already contested sea border and five other dragons looking to usurp my power, I would have been a lot more interested in the little humans after my minion army was unable to reach my set goal at Claw Island. At the very least I would get more active after minions that carry my name are sent out get vanquished and the enemy literaly appears at my gates where I basically sit on the secret to restoring Orr.
If I am too vain to relocate, I could rally my best people around me in my defense or hatch a contingeny plan like Glint did in case the pesky creatures prove to be a match for me.
Zhaitan did react.
He sent an overwhelming force to Fort Trinity… which got pushed back.
He sent out one of his most powerful minions (Eye of Zhaitan) to trap and separate Trahearne and the Command to kill them… and failed.
He had his most powerful, non-dragon, champion (a dragon wouldn’t fit in there) guard his source of power… which got killed.
He had an army of dragons defending him when the fleet assaulted… and was killed by dues ex machina weapon specifically designed to harm him.
Every time we succeeded, he threw something bigger at us. And we didn’t succeed every time (see Temple of the Forgotten God). And he still kept an ace up his sleeve with his dragon army that was tearing apart the fleet – but then we got the dues ex machina called Glory of Tyria showing up to finish him off.
Player race is irrelevant (well, from an out of universe perspective it just solidifies that all sylvari won’t die if Mordremoth was killed making Caithe’s line even sillier). Risen were dragon minions just as sylvari and mordrem were – there is a difference between the two, but the risen didn’t suffer any kind of drawback at all. They remained “alive” and active, and even acted as if Zhaitan still lived. They even, over time, got a power boost (see Tequatl, if not also the Orrian temple reworks that made them more challenging meta events).
And risen were just as converted and brainwashed as any other dragon minion – mordrem guard were a bit unique in how they were brainwashed, but sylvari were not brainwashed.
The line would have been far more believable from an in-universe perspective if all risen did, in plot, just collapse in a pile of undead mush. But that never happened.
Torolan, there’s a huge difference between “story consistency” and “maps stuck in time” and half of your arguments deal with the latter.
Only the Taimi argument has merit – the Zhaitan one almost does, but consider this: what else would Zhaitan do when all he has is minions? At least he throws different kinds of minions every time, and even overwhelming odds sometimes (Battle of Fort Trinity).
And even discounting every time we see the Nightmare Court it’s based in 1325 AE not 1329 AE, the Nightmare Court was always a splintered group, not wholly united. And based on Dragon’s Stand, they already have a new leader (as most organizations do, they get a replacement instead of falling apart entirely).
Do their spectral agony indicate that they are very twisted and tormented beings? if so after death wouldn’t they go in torment realm? I don’t recall seeing any mursaat’ look-like things in realm of torment in nightfall. Ofc assuming that we saw whole realm of torment.
The Realm of Torment wasn’t strictly (or necessarily) for “very twisted and tormented beings” truth be told. It was Abaddon’s realm and was where all things touched by Abaddon went. Good or bad.
Further, we never really see non-humans in the afterlives, when it comes to sapient races, with some very rare exceptions like the charr killed in the Cataclysm and some centaurs in the Fissure of Woe.
About mursaat being wiped we can never assume things like that: devs can pull plot twists as much as they want like: “being wiped? only those that heroes from 250 encountered, but how much those heroes could know – only as much they could see, the world is vast” etc..
Lazarus calls himself the last. If anyone would believe there might be more mursaat out there, it’d be him.
They same can go for dwarens, forgotten and jotuns and seers. What death means for each of race. Pulling "rebirth’’ of mursaat, pulling rebirth of anyone. How much of death was Lazarus, dired of life force, dried of magic, with destroyed flesh and blood, w/o any reamins, w/o malice and torment?
Dwarves are known to have all undergone the Rite of the Great Dwarf. They are all stone. This is an undesputed fact.
It’s also stated by “the Last Forgotten” that even he was not long for the world of Tyria – of course this doesn’t mean extinction, since we know the Forgotten are capable of leaving the world. So they, at least, can return.
And Lazarus was never dead. What happened to him was that a fragment of his soul was altered and twisted. His “rebirth” wasn’t a literal “come back from the dead” situation but instead a “back from a terminal situation”. Like kitten patient making a recovery.
Saul didn’t stumble into a golden city. The mursaat city was alabaster with golden filigree. There is a HUGE difference.
And as stated, Tarir came to be post-GW1.
The mursaat city was alabaster AND golden filigree. I already had conceded my mistake on it, but the precise description has a huge difference from BOTH a city of massive gold AND the mursaat structures of massive nonmetal mineral found on the Ring of Fire.
I was responding in order, and had written that up before your successive posts.
Couldn’t press post due to being in a rush though so it only submitted a few hours after writing, and I hadn’t reread the thread yet.
I believe his line said every 15 seconds is “For the glory of the White Mantle and Unseen Ones!”
So ever since GW1 honestly, I’ve been wondering about how Necromancers function in society. Cause like, they work with forces surrounding death and such wouldn’t that cause them to be viewed with suspicion? What kind of like, societal place does a necromancer typically occupy?
Largely depends on the race.
Humans tend to see necromancers as weird – and many human necromancers are – but there are also respected priests and other individuals. Though many humans are put off by the field of magic itself – the whole “working with the dead” concept bothering them. We were told pre-release that with the undead of Orr both in GW1 and again with Zhaitan, humans had a recently-increased superstition of Necromancers = untrustworthy, but this is not widespread as it’s rarely seen in-game.
Charr and asura see necromancy as tools. Creepy, but tools.
Sylvari have absolutely no qualms about it, and see necromancy is merely studying an aspect of living. This makes them most common to have necromancers.
Norn are actually interesting, because the little lore we got actually indicates that they hold the highest disdain for necromancers. IIRC, it’s due to the whole “desecrating bodies” thing – I imagine it’s a bit of an insult to a norn’s legend for their body to be used in experiments or as minions to someone else. I think that’s the real reason why Avarr the Fallen was an outcast – not because he cheats (GW2 lore shows that norn don’t care about such), but because he takes the bodies of fallen norn.
Also, their minions, are they actually grafted together from corpses (which I imagine would weird peopel out no?) or are they more like summons that just happen to look that way?
Lore hints at both.
For Zhaitan it was a world where people have defied and embraced death itself by becoming undead and he believed he was Death itself.
Zhaitan never made claim of being “Death itself” – that’s Dhuum that does that.
Zhaitan was all about giving eternal life and reunion with lost ones through undeath. Which in turn meant his minions made the claim that Zhaitan (and themselves) could not die (perhaps that’s what you mean by believing it was “Death itself”?).
Mordy wanted a world where it was all nature and even the creatures are born from nature and he believed himself to be the World itself.
There’s nothing that’s really “all about nature” for Mordremoth. After all, he got Scarlet Briar to advance technologies in order to give him that power boost to rise. That’s far from “a world of all nature”. Instead, Mordremoth showed via Aerin that he wanted to destroy the world, and throughout HoT (from trailer to final mission) that he saw himself as the world, as what sustains life, and “home” to all creatures.
Basically, he was becoming “the sustainer of life”.
As much as it would be dangerous to see a connection here between the Elder Dragon’s way of think and the corrupted Bloodstone people. I can’t help but see a type of connection as if they are hinting on a piece of how the Elder Dragons came to be.
If so the questions remains what caused the Elder Dragons to start absorbing so much magic that made them into their magic hungry and God complex Elder Dragon self all those centuries ago? Also were they always Elder Dragons since even the Bloodstone corrupted began to change in physical forms?
Well we are hinted that other dragons and dragon minions can become Elder Dragons, and we have a multitude of dragon and dragon-like races (two from Tyria and three from Cantha, and a fifth hinted at via miniatures) – of which both Mordremoth and EoD-description for Kralkatorrik match two of them. Glint talks about a world with only dragons in Edge of Destiny, likely not merely referring to the last Dragonrise but some far more ancient time.
So my theory has been that the Elder Dragons were just six individuals among many natural magic-consuming races (not dissimilar to the Chak) who grew ambitious and power hungry and betrayed their races and began consuming far more magic.
You can try to justify it but its kind of obvious that Anet writers didn’t plan through the story for 4-5 expansions. Thats why you get such a joke encounter with Estel.
On a side note: what does anyone think of the fact the three Inquisitors have the same names as some of the WiK members from gw1. Could they have tapped into the power of the bloodstone and be the originals or is it simply a case of reusing names to throw a bone to gw1 lore fans.
On Estel: Wouldn’t make sense given they gave her the leading rank and they stated before GW2 released that they had “big plans” for the mursaat.
On the Journal Writers: They’re not all Inquisitors – in fact, none is. One’s an apprentice, one’s a justiciar, and one’s a “Grand Savant”. In GW1, respectively to name they were a justiciar, an Inquisitor, and a… ranger not scholar. So it’s beyond unlikely that they’re the same, unless they got mind wiped and demoted in rank. Most likely Anet just took the names as references to GW1.
No. His “shamans” are only able to spread his corruption and icebrood powers. Go play the norn storyline “Defend the Mists” – it explains perfectly why Jormag has access to the Mists.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Through_the_Veil
Yes, the icebrood can invade the mist.
And if you bothered to go further in that very storyline by two steps:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Into_the_Mists
It outright states that the only reason they can do such is because they captured the Wolf Havroun while he had opened a portal and is hijacking said portal.
Exactly what I said…
But the mursaat didn’t leave Tyria during Prophecies. Why? Maybe they couldn’t.Yes they can, that’s why they were called the Unseen Ones.
No, they were called the Unseen Ones because they could be invisible, not because they could leave the world.
If that was so, then the Six Gods would be called the Unseen Ones. Dessa would be called the Unseen One. Rytlock would be. Our characters from both games would be.
Not the mursaat’s MO. If they can easily avoid fighting and death, they take it.
Who knows, they have stuff to defend.
Such as?
Oh, right. Nothing but their lives.
Source?
Tons of Mursaat in the Prophecies
Does not give the source that they either required or took lots of magic.
Actually, the vast majority of titans WERE sent out.
No they weren’t. The gate was closed soon enough.
Not until hundreds upon hundreds had escaped. Unless you don’t remember the Titan quests after the final mission.
And they attacked dwarves and humans after wiping out the mursaat.
The ones on Shiverpeak Mountains, not in their city.
The titans attacked humans across Tyria – from Maguuma to Ascalon. Their city is somewhere in Tyria, presumably. Khilbron stats he wiped out the remaining mursaat.
You say it as if we see all.
He outright states:
Undead Lich: “The Mursaat are being quickly swept away as will all those who stand before my legions.”
He was referring to the ones in the mountain and the islands, not the city.
He was referring to all mursaat in general. That would include the mountains, Ring of Fire, and yes, even in Kryta and their city.
So it seems that given he knows so much of them that he would know that he’d have to wipe out this city in order for the mursaat to be “quickly swept away”.
What does he know about the Mursaat? All he knew was the stuff from the Prophecy.
And as we were shown in GW2, he studied the mursaat artifacts before the events of Prophecies (he has a mursaat statue in his tower). He likely studied the mursaat artifacts from Arah, since that’s where he got the scroll – so it’s obvious he had access to those vaults which held the jotun, forgotten, mursaat, and seer artifacts (whether or not he was legally allowed to have such access).
Why would they put a teleporter in the Shiverpeak Mountains if they don’t have a city there?
To quickly send troops where they may need.
Because they have important business there, tell me if they put on in the jungle, for what purpose? And the one on the mountain was heavily guarded.
I just told you the purpose.
And no, the one outside Thunderhead Keep was left unguarded entirely – if you ran out there instead of defending Jalis you’d see that.
And the quote was clear. He was delirious. And it said forest, not jungle. Forest. Big difference.
There is no forest in the island, just rocks and lava.
No mention of the forest around the city itself.
It’s an unlikely but entirely plausible theory. There is nothing in your quote that debunks it.
No, we only uncovered part of the jungle, that’s not a good way to argue.
Please point out then where we have not uncovered that is plausible for Saul to have traveled to. In GW2 we go nearly all the way to the edge of the map, which would mean Saul went beyond Tyria. Beyond the Maguuma as we know it. Could he truly have gotten that far on foot (it would have to be on foot, given that the week long ride was from Shaemoor area, so they would probably only get as far as Fort Koga in that week long ride).
Could a delirious man had made it through one of the most dangerous places on continental Tyria with no food or drink to the other side of said dangerous area, full of man-eating plants, saurians, and more?
Doubtful.
I always thought it was odd that it is continuously claimed the Mursaat had been completely wiped out. It made sense they sent a large faction to defend the Fire Islands but I thought their main city was in Janthir considering we use the Eye of Janthir to find the chosen. But now that Lazarus is also saying he is the last of the Mursaat unless he is mistaken from being half-dead for so long.
I wonder if he would try to use the power he absorbed to revive his brethren. It would lead nicely into the Fire Islands maps.
Nothing ever said that it was mursaat who lived on Janthir. All we’re told is that Saul went there and retrieved the Eye of Janthir from individuals with the Gift of True Sight.
They could have been mursaat. Or they could have been other fanatics of mursaat like the White Mantle. Or they could have been subjugated by the mursaat. Or even wiped out by mursaat (or other groups) and Saul took the Eye from wreckage and ruins.
Is it not possible that the golden city Saul saw in the Maguuma was Tarir,
occupied by the Mursaat while the Exalted were dormant?
Saul didn’t stumble into a golden city. The mursaat city was alabaster with golden filigree. There is a HUGE difference.
And as stated, Tarir came to be post-GW1.
Were there any confirmations about their cities being in the Maguuma Jungle? They could be somewhere up in the Verdant Cascades, too.
And could there be a possibility that Lazarus lied about being the last one because he wants to be the single ruler over the White mantle for his personal revenge against Humans and Asura?
We don’t know where the one city was. All we know is that Saul stumbled, delirious, through a forest after being ridden out in an unknown means of transport for a week. That’s what we’re told – a forest, a week ride out.
But what kind of ride? Dolyak? Horse? Boat? Hell, a griffon!? We don’t know.
And what kind of forest? Again, we don’t know.
Guys, does the wiki override press releases by Arenanet?
No, but in-game dialogue does.
ArenaNet loves to estimate dates, though why they did 300 instead of their usual 250 is unknown.
But it’s outright stated dozens of times in game by the Exalted themselves that they came to be at the same time as the Zephyrites, after the events of Eye of the North, when the dwarves and the Brotherhood of the Dragon were dying out.
There’s also the fact that we go where Tarir is in GW1 and it’s not there.
I’m not sure how Mursaat come into existence…with the lore surrounding the Exalted, it’s possible that they go through a similar process. Maybe they were once humans, which is why they have such a tie to humanity in the first place. Have the origins of Mursaat ever been explained? EDIT: I suppose thinking about it, Mursaat actually predate humanity by thousands of years, so they can’t really be originally humans. Still begs the question, though – have their origins ever been explained?
They are an ancient flesh and blood race. Their origins would be no different than humanity on Earth or on Tyria (read: evolved from other races or came to the world via portals and whatnot).
They are NOTHING like the Exalted, which are energy beings housed within armor.
Gorseval actually has that second property – just as the titans in the Realm of Torment are made of the fleshy land, Gorseval is made of the flesh of the bodies it forms around.
But the rest holds true.
The burst of magic could have been Mordremoth’s attempt to fool everyone into thinking he died – after all, Zhaitan’s death didn’t give such (then again, that could just mean Zhaitan is the one still alive).
There was no visible burst after Zhaitan’s death (though he was beneath a shroud of clouds maybe we just didn’t see it) but Savant Valis’ Research Journal reveals that the Bloodstone started growing and that this coincided with Zhaitan’s death. He also says that the Stone reacted in a similar but more exaggerated way after Mordy’s death.
So I would say magic was also released upon Zhaitan’s death, just less because the Pact starved him before. The Tequatl update pretty much confirms this anyway.
True, forgot to mention that.
But that goes into the ploy I suggested Mordremoth could use – lose magic to fool those killing him that he died.
Gotta wonder what Virdant Brink would look like if/when those vines start to either dry out or decay… I could see this decay eventually causing sinkholes to appear all over the place…
They may not. Dragon corruption remains unchanged with the Elder Dragon’s death, as seen with Orr and the risen.
Which is why Caithe’s “this may kill the sylvari people” fear was totally idiotic.
I know the Bloodstone got its current name from being sealed by Doric’s blood, but I’m kinda wondering if it could be possible that is was made with blood as well. Elder Dragon blood to be exact.
The Seers, knowing that there was nothing they could do themselves to stop them, decided to use the Elder Dragons’ own magical hunger against them. They gathered up the blood from the Elder Dragons to fashion the stone, possibly jailbroke it with enchantments to increase the rate of its magical absorption, maybe added some protection spells to obscure its location, and they simple let it do its thing and slowly drained the world of most of its magic.
They fought fire with fire, and in the end they basically made their own inert ED stand-in device. (And then the Six kittened it all up.)
A Study in Gold states that the Seers had “divine magic” for making the Bloodstone.
This has led me to think there was once a pantheon of gods native to Tyria – or that came to Tyria from someplace else just like the Six Gods did. This pantheon may or may not have included the Great Dwarf, Zintl, Amyali and Koda – perhaps some god of the Seers as well. And I think that the Bloodstone is, rather than blood of dragons (which are still tied to the Elder Dragons as seen with Kralkatorrik’s blood and the Sanguinary Blade) but the blood of gods. We know that divine magic also seems to counteract Elder Dragon corruption – see the divine fire at the end of S2 – and the Elder Dragons have oddly been ignoring the Bloodstones despite how much magic they hold.
And I don’t think the Six messed anything up, per se. The journals mention that the Seers had devices to tap into the Bloodstones’ magic – it’s likely these devices recovered by the Durmand Priory came from Arah and were used by the Six when Abaddon gave magic and the other five resealed it with Doric’s blood. If so this means they acted within potential scenarios that the Seers thought would occur – the need to spread magic again.
Are the bloodstones the answer to preventing that destruction? If we destroy a bloodstone (assuming that’s possible, considering they’re growing) are we just going to make things worse? Are they a replacement worth keeping the balance of magic in check?
They could be “the answer” and a “replacement worth keeping”, but even the Forgotten had no means to make a Bloodstone. This means that we don’t either – unless Zinn’s study of the Seer turned out fruitful in that field (that would be a bad plot development – anet don’t do it) or the Six Gods wrote such down in Arah.
As for destroying a bloodstone – yeah. Just watch that cinematic. The explosion was basically a nuke, and was only stopped because someone (presumably Lazarus) consumed most of the magic. What magic remained turned Bloodstone Fen into a floating mess of chaoticness. We can probably expect the situation of Bloodstone Fen to be common place if magic keeps overflowing in the world, and destorying a bloodstone without sucking up most of the magic would be very bad – the NPCs and journals all say the Bloodstone exploding should have destroyed even Kryta – even Lion’s Arch. That’s half of continental Tyria destroyed.
Pretty kitten wide radius there. Definitely bad.
Might even be enough to kill all remaining Elder Dragons with just one bloodstone explosion.
Nothing says we can’t – in fact, if not for the players’ actions in the Personal Story there’s a good chance that Jormag would have led a major assault on Lion’s Arch as well (TBH, Jormag is the one dealt with the most out of all Elder Dragons – we only go after Zhaitan because his preparations were ignored unlike Jormag’s).
And one of the major theories about S3 is that Jormag and Kralkatorrik will also become active.
The Six Gods left the world of Tyria because of the damage they do when they directly involve themselves. A civil war between them turned an entire sea into a desert, and a verdant coastline into a poisonous wasteland.
They also want humanity to stand on their own, and the best means to do that is non-interference.
It would be nice to see plots related to them again – particularly Menzies and Dhuum need to be handled – but I wouldn’t expect them to just up and return to Tyria. Seeking them out on the other hand…
Not to mention repeatative.
Too similar to “Your weakness makes me laugh” there, with his two lines in the whole 10 minutes (at least it feels that way)…
During Eir’s funeral, a norn – Rune – mentions that the icebrood are becoming more problematic – more active and widely spread out.
So it’s possible we could get events for icebrood (and maybe even branded given the Shatterer revamp – should they tie lore into that – and the Blazeridge ley line events).
I had also noted the psuedo-dragon minion form of those… infected by the blast.
Aside from being magic hungry, Taimi states that they need magic to live. They also are now glowing an odd color and their eyes are red. And when bloodstone shards are impaled on them, you get a Matthias Abomination going.
Which makes me wonder if the Bloodstones and dragon corruption might be related somehow. Or if it’s just the result of heavy magical concentrations.
That makes more sense to me too. I was pulling eight from a recent discussion, and didn’t actually fact check it – I just remembered she was young.
Still, Taimi seems to have been in mentorship pre-college but post pre-college schooling when we meet her. Given the events of S2 with Phlunt, it might be that she is now officially part of the college, so hard to really say where she is.
Wouldn’t be logical
Are you insinuating that the GW2 plotline is based upon logic and not the writer’s notions of narrative impact?
Logical causes and outcomes are not the bedrock upon which this story has been laid for quite a while.
I am insinuating that they have been trying.
Ever since the fiasco with Scarlet, at least.
It’s highly unlikely. We don’t see the Norn could escape Jormag like that.
Because only one norn per Spirit of the Wild – at most – can slip into the spirit realm.
They can’t take a whole race with them. Not that the norn would flee like that.
Jormag’s power was not from the norn, he gives his shaman power. That is what shamans are for.
No. His “shamans” are only able to spread his corruption and icebrood powers. Go play the norn storyline “Defend the Mists” – it explains perfectly why Jormag has access to the Mists.
Which means neither the dragons nor other races could catch them.
Exactly what I said…
But the mursaat didn’t leave Tyria during Prophecies. Why? Maybe they couldn’t.
No proof showed that, they could be trying to fight the Titans.
Not the mursaat’s MO. If they can easily avoid fighting and death, they take it.
Even at the cost of another race.
Certainly more than enough to let a lot of them hide away, their entire race was able to hide from the dragons, when the dragons were drainingthe magic.
Source?
The majority of the titans were not sent out, and a large number of them were dealing with other beings.
Actually, the vast majority of titans WERE sent out.
And they attacked dwarves and humans after wiping out the mursaat.
Where? We done see the portals opening to their city, does he even know where was their city?
You say it as if we see all.
He outright states:
Undead Lich: “The Mursaat are being quickly swept away as will all those who stand before my legions.”
So it seems that given he knows so much of them that he would know that he’d have to wipe out this city in order for the mursaat to be “quickly swept away”.
Complete nonsense.
If they don’t have a city there, why would they put a portal inside the jungle? If there were teleports to Ring of Fire island, it would be very heavily guarded, there is no way Saul could make it through without meet any of the Mursaat, and the quote was clear, he saw the city through the way to the jungle.
Why would they put a teleporter in the Shiverpeak Mountains if they don’t have a city there?
To quickly send troops where they may need.
And the quote was clear. He was delirious. And it said forest, not jungle. Forest. Big difference.
But tell me, oh wise one who seems to know all in his years of trolling. Where exactly is this city in the Maguuma? Because we uncover nearly every bloody inch of it across the two games. And not a trace.
Or will you argue that the city is in that small area we haven’t seen yet – the southern half of the fogged area north of Rata Sum?
Age six definitely seems too young. I always saw and read asura colleges as being equivalent to American high schools and colleges combined. Which means starting at early teens.
Taimi is considered a genius even by individuals most consider a genius (Zojja), and iirc we meet her when she’s eight (so by now she’d be… ten? eleven?) and she’s in her post-pre-college stage. As I understand asura academics it is “pre-college” → “mentorship” → “college” – and Taimi is in that mentorship phase.
Mordremoth’s true body is the Mouth of Mordremoth – part of the meta. What Trahearne and Canach said was largely metaphorical and related to Mordremoth’s powers over mind and plant.
Mordremoth can transfer its mind across all its corruption – so it “is” the corruption he spreads, but it is not his actual physical body. If his physical body (the Mouth of Mordremoth) is killed, he can transfer his mind into his corruption (just as he transfered part of it into Trahearne) and grow a new body – a new “Mouth of Mordremoth” as it is.
In order to kill Mordremoth, you had to destroy his mind – or rather, his connection to the Dream – so that he could not transfer his mind with his body’s destruction. And with Trahearne’s destruction, all (known) copies of his mind were also destroyed (and the magic Mordremoth consumed let back out into the world at an excessive rate).
Technically speaking it’s possible that Mordremoth isn’t truly dead – who’s to say he didn’t plant other “seeds” of his mind in various (or all) mordrem? The burst of magic could have been Mordremoth’s attempt to fool everyone into thinking he died – after all, Zhaitan’s death didn’t give such (then again, that could just mean Zhaitan is the one still alive).
We were not the final blow to the mursaat, but we killed the majority of them and destroyed their chain of command. The titans played clean up.
I stopped playing new GW1 content after finishing War of Kryta. I’m loosely aware of the Lazarus confrontation later, but was there more Titans Vs Mursaat stuff after the LA Battle?
I should really go back and do the remaining content, but it feels almost too long a gap now.
No. All mursaat v. Titan was off-screen during the finale of Prophecies.
War in Kryta was the last of mursaat stuff in GW1. All that came after was Heart of the North (dealt with White Mantle going into hiding and Gwen/Kieran marriage) and Winds of Change (beginning of Cantha going xenophobic isolationists).
I’ve always wondered though, would the Mursaat actually been safe from the Elder Dragons in a spirit realm? While most dragons don’t seem to have the ability, some like Zhaitan and Mordremoth have shown to be able to influence and/or see into the Underworld or metaphysical whatever sort of realm the Dream is. Even Jormag has influence in the Mists now by having the SoS capture havrouns, and I doubt the havrouns are unique beings in history when it comes to being able to into the Mists like they do.
Mordremoth shows no such influence over the Mists and all Zhaitan can do is pull souls from there.
Jormag’s influence is only thanks to the norn (Svanir and the one havroun). Not – as far as we know – an innate ability of his own. And even if it was, which is possible, it would not be enough to search an entire globe.
Furthermore, slipping halfway into the spirit realm is not how they hid from the Elder Dragons – they fully left the world. Slipping halfway into the spirit realm is how they survived the Elder Dragons before fully leaving the world.
Where did it say they were shifting to the spirit realm?
Logical deduction that I explained in the very post you quoted. Re-read.
If they were into the spirit realm, they would not be able to escape Jormag.
Jormag did not have corrupted or captured norn during the last awakening.
And even if Jormag truly did not need havrouns to send his minions into the Mists, there’s still the simple problem that Jormag could not cover all of the world.
And the fact that the mursaat fled the world entirely.
Randall Greystone: Indeed. They worked together once, but the mursaat betrayed the other races and fled from the world, returning as the Unseen Ones.
Also no proof showed the Titans could see through the Mursaat, yes they once were spirits, but not anymore.
The very fact that the mursaat were unable to hide from the titans is proof that the titans could find them while invisible.
Actually we can see they were draining magic with their tower and devices, I don’t think it would not be enough even for a group of them to hide away.
So then tell me, how much magic were they draining and how much magic is needed to hide away (and not just turn invisible)?
Can you tell me, because I sure as hell never saw it mentioned or implied.
Even without their spectral agony working, they are still very powerful magicians, it’s not like they are totally powerless against the Titans as well. They also got their own city deep in the jungle, which the Titans didn’t invade since they were driven off from the jungle quickly.
And it isn’t like the titans aren’t weak either.
And Khilbron sent titans specifically to hunt down the remaining city.
Was that referring to the Mursaat stronghold we’ve seen in Ring of Fire Island? Highly UNLIKELY.
Given how much of Tyria we’ve explored across both games…
It’s actually highly likely that Saul stumbled through a mursaat teleporter.
Whether in GW1 or GW2, we would have come across this “marble city with towers reaching the sky” if it were in the Maguuma Jungle by now.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
It definitely sounds like a he, but the two look nothing alike. Compare OP’s image to the wiki’s image of the Raving Asura
Looks like this might be a brand new figure.
I’m more interested in this figure’s plan. The journals talk about destabilizing the fractals. What would that accomplish?
Wouldn’t be logical, given the Ash Legion’s presence and job at the Black Citadel. Their entire personal story plot is about uncovering Flame Legion spies.
And putting one suddenly in a Tribune position would be stupidly hard to reasonably pull off.
He was confessor by 1325 at the very least, which is likely around the time if not before we killed Confessor Estel – curious to me that there’d be two Confessors. He was likely second-in-command at the beginning of the personal story, and rose with us killing the foolish Confessor Estel in the unknown parents storyline.
How could I have been so blind? All this time I trusted Vizier Khilbron’s counsel and thought he had all our best interests at heart, while in truth everything he did was to further his own agenda. I did what everyone asked of me. I opened the Door of Komalie but to my dismay I learned that the door held back the evil titans and the Mursaat were actually attempting to protect the world from their wrath. After the door cracked, the Vizier revealed himself to be a Lich Lord and took control of the titans with the Scepter of Orr. With the Mursaat in shambles, there is no one left to stop the Lich but me. I have little time before he sends his titans across Tyria to rule the world.
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Flameseeker_Prophecies
We were not the final blow to the mursaat, but we killed the majority of them and destroyed their chain of command. The titans played clean up.
Also, the mursaat’s ability to “hide themselves from the real world” is heavily implied to be slipping into the spirit realm. Which spirits can do at will. This is why Ascension and Weh no Su (called the same thing by scholars) both allow us to see individuals who slip into the Mists/spirit realm.
Titans, being made of tormented souls, likely can do the very same and thus would be able to see into the spirit realm – effectively making them having the Gift of True Sight. So mursaat wouldn’t be able to hide from them, and spectral agony would likely be ineffective against them just as it is against eidolons which are described similarly as titans.
Do we even know if they had a home city? Saul could have stumbled through a teleporter and landed at the Ring of Fire base for all we know. In his delirioum, he could have seen the Ether Seals’ glowing lights and floating bits high in the sky as those “towers that reached the sky”. An even if they did, the titans would have gone there to hunt them down.
Plus, it’s Tribune Desertgrave’s job to keep the Flame Legion from getting all subversive.
Rytlock barely handled that side of fighting the Flame Legion. And excluding those two there is one other Blood and one other Ash tribune at the Black Citadel – excluding the Iron tribunes there.
It’s more likely that the letters are from either Imperator Bangar, or are about the ghost situation.
I’m sure this as all been said already, but it’s dumb how the Priory knew about Jade Armors, and how convenient it is that miss dues ex machina could asura-tech some anti-spectral agony power from some research notes she found in the trash bin, and how the UNSEEN are now easily seen by everyone and like to make grand entrances. So yeah.
It makes perfect sense that the Priory knew.
Durmand, the founder of the Durmand Priory, and his initial scribes were around during the finale of the War in Kryta. They would have documented it – either first hand or second hand.
Taimi doesn’t pull a dues ex machina, she literally took Zinn’s invention that was used during the War in Kryta from the city made by Zinn and gave it to the Commander.
Learn the difference between “pulling from old established lore” and “solving all problems out of nowhere with no explanation or premise”.
As for Lazarus being seen, for the billionth time the past two days:
The mursaat are not permanently stealthed without control – they can chose whether or not to be seen! The thing about Ascension was so that they could not hide from the players – they could reveal themselves to everyone, if they wished, but they cannot hide themselves from those with the Gift of True Sight.
And Lazarus chose to let himself be revealed.
Seriously folks… This isn’t new, and it was never implied or stated, explicitly or otherwise, that they are forever invisible.
If that was the case, ask yourself: How the hell would Saul see them when he randomly stumbled upon their city?
Now about what Lazarus is after? Clearly he’s not here to help kill dragons. Why bother if he can just leave?
I think it’s likely he wants his revenge. Now, you say, against whom? Well the white mantle, the people he swore to get revenge on.
His last words in GW1 (chronologically) were:
“Accursed human! You have done this to me! I will not forget this! Countless generations will suffer for your actions this day!”
His plot is definitely a revenge one. Because not only the above, caused by asura and human causing Lazarus’ power to turn and twist on himself, but Lazarus’ entire race was wiped out (as confirmed in Out of the Shadows).
The question is how he goes about it. He just absorbed a whole bloodstone’s worth of magic – that’s a lot. This practically makes him a demi-god in terms of power in of itself.
My theory:
He’s after godhood in a more literal fashion. I suspect he’ll be trying to pull what we (players) have been expecting we’ll do to Glint’s Egg – turn it into an Elder Dragon replacement. But what will he do with this power? Certainly not be benevolent.
There are ultimately two things I think he’d go after: he will either seek out to destroy all humanity and asurakind (hence the no interest in the throne – why bother when he’ll just destroy it?) – and possibly the charr, norn, and sylvari for Destiny’s Edge and the Pact(?) interfering.
Or he will seek out to pull something akin to what Abaddon tried to do during the war leading to the Exodus. That is, turn Tyria into his own personal kingdom, effectively enslaving everyone through reverence and maybe even gifts of too much (drug-like) magic.
(On an aside, this is an interesting notion for what Abaddon’s gift of magic could have done when he blessed it “too freely” – everyone blessed crazed and killed others for more magic, eventually needing it to live).
This wouldn’t be the case if the Pact and the Priory knew about the dragon research. The area would be secured by Priory, Vigil and Whispers members and the Arcane Council wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret.
Shiren, I’ll just reply to one thing because it seems to debunk your entire argument:
It is outright known that the Order of Whispers – and in turn the Pact – knows about Rata Novus and their hatred of Primordus and researching into them. We know this because of the meta event.
Yet we don’t see a single Order of Whispers, Priory, or Vigil agent in Rata Novus. This means only one thing:
The Pact told Rata Sum asura and delegated the task of uncovering data to them.
Probably a manpower thing. Ultimately a bad decision, but in the end this is the only explanation that makes an incling amount of sense for why Rata Sumians ever found out about Rata Novus – certainly wasn’t Taimi, the Commander, or Destiny’s Edge (I refuse to call them Dragon’s Watch).
With that in mind, can you really say that if the Pact knew about that room, they would not just go “Hey, Sumians, get that data for us first.”?
I believe it was stated sometime in Season 2 that the Elder Dragons push minions out of their territory in pulses. Even if not mentioned, that’s what we see really.
Zhaitan for example had only been active in four bursts – when he woke, when Port Stalwart was destroyed, the final battle at the end of SoS novel, when Port Noble was destroyed, and the personal story.
The daughter being a mesmer isn’t the surprising part.
The working for opposing secret orders is. I think the mother would be good and experienced enough to catch that.
And yes, her addition was definitely meant to keep us thinking.
It’s one of the few things I’m enjoying speculating about.
Was the “don`t attract too much attention” bit before, just set up for the whole “prank”?
Think of it this way:
If nothing happened, no one would be suspicious.
If something happened, Rata Novus golems go haywire and attack all the time – it happened at the very beginning of the instance – and could be played off as that, should some bystandard find and try to hack the password system.
Either way, logically speaking, no one actually would suspect it. Because ancient attacking golems seem to be a bi-daily occurrence there based off of the very beginning.
Adding to that the dialog implies we have to finish the puzzle first. It doesn`t say we can ignore it.
Technically it does have to be done. It’s just that if we don’t do it, Taimi does.
We were told: Finish the puzzle, to proceed. Nothing more.
That’s why it’s called a bonus objective. You might remember those things, they were very common in 90s games. They were rarely ever mentioned in actual objective lists, and when they were they were only hinted at, never explicit.
Unlike modern games where your hand is held every fraction of a step along the way.
This is nothing new nor special nor is it even looked down upon. ArenaNet did this every release even.
Remember Recalibrating the Waypoints in Season 2? Taimi told you to use her device on the miniature waypoints – but there’s an achievement for just wacking it with your normal skills, and she yells at you (and Braham). This is the EXACT same thing. It’s a hidden, bonus objective.
It`s just weird that she didn`t use it to support us. She didn`t even mentioned that she wanted to conserve energy, to not attract more Chakk and we should do it instead. So, as long as we don`t see the defenses, I see it as a plothole and will continue to ask the question: “How did she fight Chakk?”
Why would she use something that would use ley line energy (as all Novus devices use) – the thing that attracts chak – when she has two strong individuals there to do the very same job without the risk of attracting more chak?
Caudecus
Housearrest with a Portal in the backyard. I don`t believe he was that much out of the loop. However it is a valid argument.
Two things.
1) He was under house arrest in the palace. You may want to replay Caudecus’s Manor story mode, as this is when that arrest happens.
2) There is no portal in the backyard.
My problem is more along the fact, that he was appearently high ranking, controling a lot of the white mantle, but ended up not knowing about these plans?
If you were my boss, and I did stuff on the side without telling you, while you were across the country under known surveillance from the police, would you know about the stuff I did on the side?
No? Why would Caudecus?
While I get secrecy, I would have liked him seperate from the WM, but still using them.
However, that might still be something that will be revealed. That he bought his rank and thought he was in charge.
I don’t think he bought his rank, but rather that he joined with no faith and intended to use the order while being within it.
Which in a way does make him separate from the White Mantle – which is why there is a schism happening between the two.
Rushed
Okay, more of a pacing issue in retrospect. Maybe I would have wished for some extra steps in between. Everything just came to us too easy (not saying that it is over).
It’s less that it was rushed or had bad pacing. It’s that there wasn’t much content to it.
They nailed the quality. But failed the quantity for us waiting 9 months before, and will be waiting 2 months after.
Typically production has 3 things to cater towards: fast release, quality of product, quantity of product. With S1, Anet hit the first and last (fast and quantity); with S2, they hit none really (borderlined all three); and with S3, they’re only hitting the second (quality).
The speech
Didn`t the commander held a norn speech at one point of the PS? I believe he was a bit more norny there. Could be mistaken, though.
My commander didn’t hold that speech – only those who went with Apatia did, and mine had Tonn.
And IIRC, that speech is a bit shorter one.
True, I had considered that myself, though I would find it odd that both mother and daughter are mesmers, and work for opposing secret orders.
I would suspect that Lady Wi from the PS would initiate her daughter into the Order and not let her fall to Caudecus.
As to why adding first name – could simply be that they wished to define her more than her husband’s last name for this arc. After all, why would adding a first name distinguish her from the one we know, when we don’t know old Lady Wi’s first name?
Though looking through the wiki, Lady Wi nor Minister Wi ever mention a daughter. Still, a possibility.
Same place as the other two wings – NE corner of Verdant Brink or the Aerodome.
You just need to be in a 10 man squad, you can be solo.
You don’t need any mastery – just HoT – to enter raids.
Rytlock also said he got two such letters before Almorra handed him one and he crumbled that one.
I think Rytlock must have quit the Blood Legions or something. That’s the feeling I get – and they are not happy about it.
The dialogue you want is at this page! on the wiki. (EDIT: Grr, the ! is not being part of the url no matter what, but wiki “Hold the line!”)
Logan Thackeray: “You’re a child!”
Taimi: “You’re a super genius.”
Logan Thackeray: “What are you doing out here? Who are you with?”
Taimi: “I’m not supposed to talk to nosy strangers.”
Logan Thackeray: “Where are your parents?”
Taimi: “Dead.”
Logan Thackeray: “Um, okay. You’re obviously a long way from home. You come with me.”
Taimi: “By whose authority are you ordering me around?”
Logan Thackeray: “By the authority vested in me by Queen Jennah of Divinity’s Reach. Now, come with me.”
Taimi: “I’m not going with you until I know where you’re taking me.”
Logan Thackeray: “To Lion’s Arch. Then, to Rata Sum. You’ve got no business out here on the battlefield.”
Taimi: “Are you paying the waypoint fees?”
Logan Thackeray: “Yes. Now, come on.”
Taimi: “You seem like a pleasant enough travel companion. C’mon, Scruffy. This nice human is taking us home.”
To be fair to Angel, I’m not sure if there’s really an easy way to explain your money magically disappearing from your pockets. I suppose she could have just gone, ’It’s a gameplay thing. No lore – sorry!’ but every explanation I try to think of is a bit contrived and silly.
Simple:
“In order to use waypoints in the lore of the game, you have to interact with them. This would be shown in-game by walking under them, but they’d have a device, powered by golem-like sentience, underneath (such as seen at the Temple of Dwayna in Orr) where you’d interact with where you want to go, and a place to deposit the fee. The fee is then transfered via miniature gate to the Arcane Council’s treasury. That same device also prevents hostiles and unauthorized individuals from using waypoints, and disconnects the waypoints from the system (making them “contested”) should a lot of said hostiles and unauthorized individuals be nearby.
This would be a lot of work to show in at every waypoint, so we just had the waypoint itself – and it would be limiting from a gameplay perspective if players had to walk to the waypoints to use them, so we don’t have that shown through mechanics."
Nothing silly. All logical. All seen in-game to various minor degrees. And I literally made that up, just now, on the spot.
The story feels a bit rushed. I can’t put my finger on it, but after the nice and slow start, it all tumbles down, axing plot points one after the other.
I didn’t get the “rushed” feeling at all.
The tumbling down is a critical point of the plot to me showing that our victory over Mordremoth was but the calm before another storm – which fits with what we were getting from the Current Events and raid.
As for “axing plot points one after the other” – that felt more like wrapping up some of HoT’s leftovers, which is good not to have dangling. Since this is no longer HoT.
Him being soo much involved and so oblivious is kinda sad to see, since we appearently should just forget that he is a puppetmaster and conecentrate on him being an powerhungry idiot who bit off more than he should.
You need to remember that Caudecus was under house arrest for four years, under constant scrutiny of the Shining Blade – his mortal enemies.
Even a puppetmaster would not be able to do much then. And when who should be his followers were acting behind his back half the continent away, when he gets there yeah he’s going to be kittened, he’s going to be agitated, he’s going to be annoyed. And this makes even smart, calm, collected individuals lose their grip and make mistakes.
To me, Caudecus’ actions made him more human to me.
Even more so since his actions showed that he was not a true believer of the White Mantle but instead was just using them – even managing to become their leader all the while. How can someone who is not a puppetmaster and evil mastermind do that?
How did Taimi defend herself against Chakk? She said she wasn’t able to get defense mechanisms going. She couldn’t install them. She limps around. Wields no weapons.
HOW DID SHE FIGHT CHAKKS?
There is a broken Golem, she could have created some device, but why do we have to go on pest control, against several Chakk and she just stood back? Conserving energy?
Unless I misread and misheard, Taimi said she couldn’t ask for help installing defenses.
That does not mean she couldn’t install defenses. She very obviously installed several to keep the 50+ asura standing right outside the door with a dragon head on it from wondering what is inside or trying to open the door.
The speech for Eir was a bit too short. I would have liked a bit more personal stuff in it. Overall the whole szene was very sweet, though i didn’t know our character was so good at handling ice with a pickaxe…
The speech I felt was appropriate, but I was on my charr. For norn, it would be appropriate to be longer since norn knew her longer and are more norn-y, but for non-norn what I heard was perfect IMO.
Why?
The pickaxe thing was funny to me. Would have preferred the animation used for carving pumpkins but at least I got humor.
I wish we could talk to our team more. We just get the normal dialog and I wish we could get from simple textbubbles from the others…
Agreed. This was something HoT failed with too.
Belindas sword glows, which indicates that it is special? (her ghost is in it, but did it glow before? Even without any skills)
It glowed since Belinda’s ghost went into it.
Garm is a filthy dog (he has a special condition = filthy)
He’s caked in blood and dirt! What do you expect.
We clean him off though. Or rather, you could if you wanted to.
It kinda felt weird for me.
Yes it is technicly optional.
Yes it is a good character moment, showing off her mischievious side.However a few seconds before, she scolded us for being loud, wanted to keep everything on the low key.
Then she pulls the joke on us.If i remember right she tells us to crack that puzzle. We have to do it. The PC even asks if that is a joke, but Taimi just rolls with it.
On one hand it does certainly plays into her character, but given the situation it felt out of place.
It was set up as something that you had to be careful around and it had no pay off.The result in not doing the puzzle is that three big golems come down and attack, attracting others, who would investigate.
And she could pull it off as just a prank on her friends. There’s nothing wrong with the puzzle, and I don’t get why you’re complaining about it being optional yet not being optional.
I haven’t played the raids yet, I don’t know if I ever will but, I do know that they are also about the white mantle. So, is the raid story important for the living world story? does the raid happen bevor or after the LW?
muchas gracias
If you go into the third raid wing and talk to Glenna and her journal, and talk to Bennet in Bloodstone Fen, and read the three journals whos pages are scattered across Bloodstone Fen, you will get about 95% of the raid story.
The only things you’ll really miss is the visual and dialogue of the bosses themselves.
Since this thread mentions “key figures”, there is one figure that no one has brought up so far it seems.
Lady Wi.
We first meet her in the noble human story where she seems to be your generic gossiping noblewoman who only knows the quality of shoes and who’s flirting with whom behind everyone’s back and nothing else. Her husband is one of the ministers, and is the host of the party that we meet her at – her husband is presented as a proud and honorous man who fully supports Queen Jennah (much like Minister Arton – these two ministers are presented as the most trustworthy of ministers for Jennah).
But then we met her again in the Order of Whispers storyline where we learn that she is in fact a spy for the Order of Whispers – and hints that her husband does not know, IIRC. She is also a capable mesmer, able to make Tybalt look like Demmi Beetlestone or capable of turning Demmi, Tybalt, and the Commander all invisible for an extended period of time.
But Out of the Shadows comes with an interesting thing. You know that female mesmer next to Caudecus? The one that made the portal that helped him escape? Her name was Lady Wi (also had first name but didn’t catch that).
So now we find out that Lady Wi is not only in the Whispers, but the White Mantle as well. And rather high ranking since she seems to be Confessor Caudecus’ aide.
Was she Whispers who infiltrated the Mantle? If so, why did she let Caudecus escape?
Or was she Mantle who infiltrated the Whispers? (The journals mention the Mantle sending spies into all sorts of orders) If so, why did she help Demmi who had critical information on Caudecus escape so easily?
Maybe that information we never learned was that Caudecus was White Mantle, and Wi used that information to infiltrate the Mantle? Or she was willing to risk the information being such and played a gambling game with letting the Whispers find out?
<hr>
A less important but also interesting note: Councillor Haia is alive.
You may remember her from the VAL-A storyline for asura, where she acts like the sweet old granny with baking cookies and all that, but turns out that she’s the one who sabotagued the PC’s VAL-A golem design into murdering machines to kill the Arcane Council. Curious that Flax said he’d make sure she would “get a lethal gift of her own someday soon”, we never see her again for four years not even in the Arcane Council instance, but here she is.
Blunder on the writer’s part? Or Flax’s implied message of killing her not all it seemed? Or is that “someday soon” just not yet coming… four years later…?
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Caithe has always been a stealthy shady individual, which is why so many didn’t like the responses the PC had towards her in S2/HoT – or the sad excuse of “it was my Wyld Hunt” (though they made that excuse much better in this release).
I don’t think a sylvari can replace the Pale Tree tbh. Nor do I see anything about Caithe hiding something or the Commander suspecting her of something – more just continued weariness after the poorly written “Caithe is acting strange even though she does this all the time but I’ve forgotten that she does this all the time!” writing we saw.
There’s a slight oddity in those dates, truth be told, that lead me to think the first draft left us still in 1328 AE.
Kasandra’s entry for 83 Zephyr 1328 mentions that after Mordremoth’s death the cracks in the Bloodstone accelerated, turning her predicted cataclysmic disaster from being away in “a matter of months” into “a matter of days”. Would be more accurate to be “a matter of years” to “a matter of months” given what actually happened. Unless the 1329 entries were meant to be Scion or Colossus 1328 as no entry takes place then. Still would have been months instead of days, but would be less of a margin of error.
Yet it didn’t rupture until nearly a full year later (13 Zephyr 1329) that she bothered to take it to Bauer, who was in charge at the Bloodstone.
About the raid on the timeline, I don’t read that as being a single assault but still just close together – Valis’ journal mentions Matthias’ death in 13 Zephyr 1329 then mentions the stronghold’s fall in 17 Zephyr – where he then heads underground to help with the ritual.
I think this means that the third raid wing happens only days before the explosion, and that said explosion is either 17 or 18 Zephyr.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
My character is a master ice sculptor. In 3 shots she can carve a perfect raven statue out of ice complete with wing contours, eyes, feathers without shattering it.
In three hits with a pickaxe. You forgot that.
Screw the norn master sculptor with his slow stone sculpting with a chisel and hammer. We the boss.
Errr, so why do we just hang up on Taimi at the end, mid-conversation, mid-reveal? That was… weird.
Didn’t seem like we hung up, or that it was mid-conversation. Taimi said what was needed. Primordus is now active.
I would like ask few questions:
1.what about the Egg? any news?
2. is Caudecus dead?
3. any news about ley line?
That’s right… except the part of higher quantity, which judging this episode 1 isn’t true at all. That’s why I’m concerned. Here’s hoping the 2nd episode is much juicy content-wise.
A new map, a new fractal, a new pvp map, a ton of improvements to classes and functionality, improvements to the AR system design, and a new LS episode is NOT a small amount of content.
Additionally, much of the improvements were based around making it easier to add more content in the future (especially new fractals), so I’m strongly suspecting that a large amount of this update was designed to enable Anet to add more things in the future more easily. Besides, this is the first episode of the new LS. The first episodes of LS1 and 2 were also somewhat short compared to the ones that followed.
To be honest, we’re only half a small map and a fractal more than what we got on average during Season 2.
Which given that we waited 9 months for this release, and will wait 2-3 more months for the next, isn’t saying much.
Yes, it was very awesome and well done, easily argued to be the best content released in terms of quality, but that’s rather pointless if we’re sitting twiddling our thumbs because we only have so much new stuff to do.
Because the next time we get new content, we’ll devour what should be a few days or weeks worth in a few hours – like this time.
All we can hope is that they keep adding Current Events for us to do new things between the episodes.
When the period between 2 releases now is equivalent to between 4 releases before, one would expect at least two or three releases’ worth of content. Not just barely more than 1 release’s worth.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
If Lazarus is interested in the bloodstones, it would give us new reason to go underneath Sparkfly/Maelstrom/Straits/Timberline areas (not sure which it would be, if a single one) as the Shiverpeak Bloodstone is there, as well as reason to go to the Ring of Fire.
Unless the destroyers are also going after the bloodstone magic all of a sudden, I don’t see their involvement.
Whatever Lazarus is planning, it’s big enough that he doesn’t care about national leadership, but still wants his cult. He did swear revenge against asura and humans for countless generations though, so it could all just be a revenge plot in the end. Question is how he will go about it.
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