Guild Wars 2

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

but it’s by no means as clear-cut as you say.

Saying Cantha cut off contact entirely before Zhaitan’s rise isn’t as ‘clear cut’ either.

My understanding is that they’d adopted a more isolationist approach, but still traded with Kryta at least (the Indomitable, the ship that Cobiah Marriner got his start on, was en route to Cantha when they were diverted to hunt the Maw. That’s when the Rising of Orr happened).

lakdav.3694:

I dont get this part in Grenth’s paragraph:
“Thus, Grenth took his place among the gods in the spot where his father had fallen.”

This would indicate Dhuum, or so it would seem considering that the sentence is after explaining how he usurped his position. While stating at the beginning that Grenths father was a mortal sculptor.

“The spot where his father had fallen” refers not to Dhuum but to Malchor, the human sculptor who is heavily implied to be Grenth’s father. Malchor very literally fell to his death just off the coast of Orr, and the region where he did so is named Malchor’s Leap after that fact. Dhuum’s last stand, the spot where Grenth defeated Dhuum in battle and the power of dominion over death was transferred to Grenth, is in Malchor’s Leap.

Thus, Grenth took his place among the gods where his father—Malchor—had fallen. At least, that’s the interpretation that most lore forum users (including myself) subscribe to. There are a couple of issues with this, such as the fact that the exact spot that Malchor actually fell from (named Sculptor’s End) was actually on the cliffs near the Dwaynan Cathedral of Zephyrs, rather than the ossuary of the Lyssan Cathedral of Eternal Radiance (the location of Dhuum’s last stand). But given that most hints seem to intentionally point to the conclusion that Malchor is Grenth’s father, I’d attribute this to either a developmental oversight or a subtlety in the story that we are not aware of (we don’t really have the full details of either event), rather than evidence to the contrary. At the very least ANet want us to believe that Malchor is Grenth’s father, but personally I believe that is because he is.

It’s a shame about the inconsistencies in the lore on this, because otherwise it’d maybe able to shed some light on one of the core mysteries of the games—the subject of this very topic. The exact wording speaks of an “ancient power” being “transferred” to Grenth—does this suggest that the dominion over a particular supernatural force of nature (in this case, death) is independent of the individual wielding it? We knew already that the gods aren’t truly omnipotent, and the fact that the Elder Dragons rival them in power suggests that their “dominion” over an aspect of nature isn’t quite complete. Which makes sense in a way, because they are not of this world, but another—but I don’t think that satisfactorily explains their nature in full. I’m still trying to reconcile this with Kerrsh’s quest (detailed above), but I can’t come up with anything.

To answer your (doubtlessly rhetorical) questions:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The sad fact of the matter is that we have absolutely ZERO confirmed cases of Mordremoth minions. We do not know what they are made of or what they look like. We, in fact, actually have zero proof that Mordremoth’s minions will even be plants! The attack named after him is soil and rock, not plant, so it could be that Mordremoth will end up being a bunch of rock minions – likely? No, not really. The name “Jungle Dragon” comes form its location though and we really don’t have any solid evidence of his corruption – not even Wychmire Swamp is solid evidence (that darker force can be any number of things – Elder Dragons aren’t the only ones whom are dark and ancient forces).

Not sure what you’re getting at here. Mordremoth’s minions could, in principle, be soil or stone, but nobody was claiming otherwise. Theorycrafting by its very nature comes with the disclaimer that “this could well all be wrong”, but that’s not grounds enough to pooh-pooh an argument.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Again, the closest we have is Crucible of Eternity, but also again – how much corruption is there in those minions? Is that how Mordremoth’s minions will look like when fully corrupted?

Given that the minions in the other experimental labs are in advanced stages of corruption and are called “evolved” (although this may not necessarily refer to how corrupted they are) I’d say it’s a reasonable assumption that the nightmare husks and hounds there are “fully corrupted”. Just so we’re on the same page, I’m not saying that they are fully corrupted, just that they could well be.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

What they’d be called? Keep in mind not all corruption takes immediate physical change (Icebrood), nor do all those with draconic influence look at all like a dragon minion when the like-dragon minions change instantly. And for name, ArenaNet would easily keep such secret to make it more surprising (it’s more likely to be Blighted than Nightmare or Summoned, or heck, it may even be “Planted” or “Sprouted” or even “Mordy”). We simply do not know. And as such, we cannot make claims to such – even if it is “a simpler explanation” or most likely or most obvious or whatever you wish to call it (ArenaNet are seldom simple in their lore, either way).

I don’t think anyone ever claimed to know what they were called. Unless you’re saying that we can’t speculate, in which case unless someone died and made you king of the lore forums, we kind of can. “Blighted” is a strong contender because it comes from the Wychmire Swamp battle and seems to be the chosen term for the “dark force” there, but it doesn’t appear anywhere else. “Summoned” is quite widely used (only for husks, though) and I think probably refers to how they got there rather than what they are. There’s a fair amount of lore around the sylvari and the druid husks that never made it into the game, I think (we never really found out what this part of the trailer was about), and the same thing may well apply to the Nightmare Court. Sylvari can summon both druid spirits and sylvan hounds, after all.

I think the most likely contender is nightmare to be honest, since that seems to be Mordremoth’s vector for spreading corruption. It’s also used for all suspected minions of Mordremoth (husks, hounds, vines) except for the Shadow of the Dragon.

Btw, the fact that there are different “stages” of corruption made me think of Scarlet and the Nightmare Court. Their motivations are definitely worth a comparison with Kellach’s.

Finally, we do see hounds without courtiers in at least one place I can think of off the top of my head, in the sylvari tutorial instance.

I…suggest you reread my post a little more carefully, Konig. You’re defeating a different argument to the one that I was making, there. I took pains not to claim anywhere that Mordremoth “made” the nightmare husks or hounds. Nightmare hounds, as we know, are nightmare-corrupted sylvan hounds (and are also called thorn wolves, overwhelmingly likely to be unrelated but still interesting to note), and I offered no explanation as to how husks are constructed, be it from “scratch” or as corrupted versions of existing creatures. I don’t think I even mentioned sylvari. All I was saying that because all the other minions in those labs are dragon minions, to me it seems likely that the husks and hounds are as well. That’s all. I said nothing about how they came to be dragon minions (although the Inquest explanation seems unlikely given these creatures’ activities elsewhere).

As an aside, I think you’re looking at the “different kind of minions” thing the wrong way. Destroyers, according to Edge of Destiny, are “forged in the molten heart of [Primordus]”. This is supported by some Guru posts which I’ll link: 1 2 3 4 but we also have a source that says that, in theory, Primordus could corrupt a living creature. Zhaitan is the most obvious example of a dragon who “corrupts” rather than “constructs”, and even then the Risen Abominations are an amalgam of corpses sewn together rather than a single corrupted creature.

Those Guru posts also function partially as a reminder—to quote Jeff himself—who are we to say what Elder Dragons can or cannot do? Figuring out how the Elder Dragons work is certainly a worthwhile line of enquiry, but trying to describe their behaviour in detail with the amount of information we have probably isn’t. We’ve faced an entire Elder Dragon’s armies and put it to rest, and yet I still don’t think I could confidently say I know anywhere near all there is to know about Zhaitan. Frankly, for all we know all dragons could be capable of corrupting or constructing minions. The larger dragon champions, if not leftover corupted creatures from a previous dragonrise, could easily be draconic constructs, created in the image of their Elder Dragon masters (the only thing we really have to suggest otherwise is that line about Glint “regaining” free will).

Anyway, I don’t think I ever said the husks or hounds were confirmed Mordremoth minions. Just that it seemed likely. Nor did I ever claim to have solid evidence of Mordremoth’s corruption, that Wychmire Swamp is definitely Mordremoth, or what his minions were made of. All I can offer is speculation based on what I think is probable, which is (rather explicitly) what I have been doing throughout this thread. I’m not sure why that upsets you so much—that’s what lore forums are for. It seems you’d rather only discuss the “solid” information we have on Mordremoth, which actually amounts to very little. But the acknowledgement that an alternative to my propositions is implicit, there’s no need to state “this thing in Wychmire Swamp is probably Mordremoth, but it could be something else!” because the second half of that sentence is implied by the first.

Oh, and the nightmare hounds being born of the Pale Tree isn’t evidence enough to state categorically that they are not related to Mordremoth. They appear nearly everywhere that the husks do, and not always with the presence of the Nightmare Court. I’m not sure of their relationship with the Dream, but I do know that they are physically corrupted by nightmare.

The fact that nightmare husks and nightmare hounds are present in Experimental Lab Green is solid proof that they’re linked to Mordremoth, without describing the nature of the link or how tenuous it may or not be. It’s not solid proof that they’re Mordremoth’s minions. In my view it suggests that, but you may disagree. Sorry to be pedantic, I’m just looking to avoid a palaver like that mursaat thread.

I think it’s perfectly possible that the nightmare husks were given to the Inquest by the Nightmare Court, since as you say that’s something we’ve seen happen before. But from what you’ve said, it seems we don’t know why that husk was handed over to the Inquest, so the explanation that the Inquest wanted to expose it to dragon corruption seems a little far-fetched.

To me, a simpler explanation for the presence of the nightmare husks in Experimental Lab Green would be simply that the husks are in some way already related to Mordremoth. The boss of Experimental Lab Green is the Evolved Husk, which begs a comparison with the bosses of Experimental Labs White and Red, the Evolved Destroyer and Bjarl the Rampager—both of whom are, unambiguously, dragon minions. Why would the nightmare husk be any different?

If this wasn’t compelling enough, we also have that the only creatures other than nightmare vines that appear during the Battle for Wychmire Swamp are summoned husks. The Battle for Wychmire Swamp, of course, is accepted as one of the strongest contenders for pre-awakening Mordremoth activity. Gamarien, whose Wyld Hunt calls him there, fears that “an even darker force [than the Nightmare Court] is at work” there, and worries that the summoned husks are harbingers of that greater foe.

The final point on whether or not the summoned husks are minions of the Elder Jungle Dragon depends on whether or not you believe that the Shadow of the Dragon, within the sylvari Dream, is a minion of Mordremoth. The Shadow of the Dragon is surrounded by nightmare hounds, and contains the same orange “glow” as the husks. So there’s an indication that the Shadow of the Dragon is linked to them as well.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In Sparkfly Fen, there is an event in which we see Nightmare Courtiers making husks out of three sylvari sacrifices, if I remember correctly.

So it would seem that husks are just that: husks made out of plant matter.

Wow, why is this not more common knowledge? The husks and hounds are linked to Mordremoth, but up until now we had nothing linking Mordremoth and the Nightmare Court. If the NC are responsible for creating the husks, then that’s something that directly relates them and Mordremoth.

So, what can we conclude form that about the nature of the gods? Nothing concrete, I’m afraid. They seem to be manifestations of nature, each an interpretation of a different facet in nature. The Elder Dragons and the Spirits of the Wild seem to also be interpretations of those same “facets”, albeit different ones. The gods may be somehow comparable to the Elder Dragons, then. The differences in the energy signatures of the gods, particular to each god, could be something similar to the unique energies that Elder Dragons exude.

Six Elder Dragons, six gods, six Facets…this wouldn’t be the first time the comparison has been drawn. It seems to be coming together, not quite making sense but coming together, but then there’s that bit about the sylvari at the end. How do they tie into everything? There’s earlier talk of fate and hidden designs, which are a running theme in the story of the sylvari. There’s definitely quite a bit missing here, but I think once we understand all this fully, we’ll understand some very deep secrets of the Guild ars universe.

I’ll adapt something I wrote for a wiki page.

Ephemeral Spirit

An offering to those who seek, beyond the Mists beyond the Dreams, on distant shores of a land unwaking, answers there lie in waiting.

This prophecy was found ciphered in the the energy signatures of facets of the human gods that the asura Kerrsh was studying in 1078 AE. His notebook was found years later by the Priory. It could be referring to the Elder Dragons—dragons are power, and the facets reflect the nature of the power that the human gods have harnessed. Both the asuran Central Transfer Chamber and the City of Arah were built on places of power, which turned out to be directly over Elder Dragons.

It is difficult to say whether this prophecy has come to pass, as nobody has been able to make sense of it yet. It is possible that the cryptic message refers to the dragons—"a land unwaking" could be the risen kingdom of Orr, and answers to the origin of the dragons do lie there.

This longstanding mystery seems to cut right to the heart of the lore of Guild Wars 2. The first time the Facets investigated were seen, they were in the lair of the prophet Glint, and were called facets of Glint (a similar word, but apparently a completely different meaning to the Aspects, which are also tied to Glint). It should be noted that at this time, Glint proclaimed to be the first creature created by the human gods, aided by the Forgotten, who were supposed to be the first race that the gods brought to Tyria to help guide the other races, but in fact it is now understood that both Glint and the Forgotten predate the gods’ arrival by a long time, the Forgotten being one of the so-called “elder races” that survived the last rise of the Elder Dragons, and Glint being a dragon champion who they had managed to free from Kralkatorrik’s control. Why they chose to maintain the façade of being servants of the human gods is unknown.

Later, the Facets, with the same appearance (namely that of a ghostly Elder Dragon champion), were investigated throughout the Tarnished Coast, Steamspur Mountains, and Woodland Cascades by Kerrsh and understood to be in fact reflective of the nature of the power that the human gods have harnessed, as well as, once again, being ghostly servants somehow tied to the Forgotten. Using a device called the Divination, Kerrsh concluded that the human gods are pieces within the Eternal Alchemy, their manifestation mere facets in the geometric whole. He told his assistant that gods are part of this world, and to think of these “facets” as one of any number of possible manifestations of those gods. He said that the ciphers he found in the energy signatures of the facts were in fact the strings on the harp of the Eternal Alchemy itself. When considering the case of Kormir, a mortal who had transcended into something greater, he wondered if that, too, was part of the Eternal Alchemy—whether it was preordained by some hidden design, or whether there was some power that could go against the schemes of fate.

The ciphers directed Kerrsh to a location, Varajar Fells, where he would spend the rest of his life. There, he said, “the six shall converge”, before being treated with yet another codebreaking exercise, the result of which is the prophecy detailed above. His notebook, found much later written in the same cipher he once yearned to decode, refers to that locale as a “valley of tumbled gods”, and concludes that the “human gods, charr gods, norn animal totems—they are part of the all-encompassing Eternal Alchemy”.

As a final note, apparently unrelated to all of the above, Amaranda the Lonesome’s description of her vision when attempting to discern the origin of Malyck, a sylvari born of a different Tree, matches very closely with the wording of the cipher presented to Kerrsh at Varajar Fells. The Dream, for example, appears to be mentioned in both, as does a “distant shore”, possibly in this context referring to where Ronan found the seed from which the Pale Tree grew.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Tamias.7059:

Now, Rata Sum is the only above-ground asuran settlement that we know of—this is something I’ve spoken about before.

Erm, no it isn’t. Other than Soreen Draa (which is tbh more of a suberbs of Rata Sum) and Thaumanova (which is called a city), there is Mrot Boru. And this doesn’t cover anywhere south of Metrica, or elsewhere off the map.

Ok, Rata Sum is the only above-ground settlement on the scale of…well, Rata Sum. And it’s a safe assumption that Rata Sum is the only modern asuran city on that scale. The scale is what made me think it was one of the six great lost cities of the asura, but it doesn’t look underground to me.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

The meta event “power overwhelming” in metrica from the luminate krewe is interesting here:

PC: What are you guarding?
Krewe Apprentice: Data, equipment,anything that might interest the inquest.This lab contains – or rather, will contain – the core power grid for the contruction of a new city, in the same mold of Rata Sum

I don’t know what keeps Rata Sum in the air, but Goemm’s lab is right above the luminate plant and is floating too.

Since Dessa seems to have some ties to the fractal (her behaviour is obvious) and she is inquest, it might be an inquest city.

Fun fact: Rata Sum is held aloft by powerstone fields arrayed using the twelvefold equation.

This is a really good question. First we should probably address what the Mists is. My understand it is that it’s just bits of “proto-matter”, floating around in nothingness and occasionally coalescing to create “something”. Within the Mists are worlds, such as Tyria. There are many slightly different versions of Tyria (these are the different servers), and all possible versions of their histories are recorded in the Mists. Some of these appear as “islands”, not-quite-worlds that resemble these histories (these are the PvP maps). The Fractals of the Mists, then, are a (largely) successful project by Dessa, an individual surrounded by plenty of intrigue of her own (which may or may not be related to the Uncategorised Fractal), which have managed to “stabilise” such islands and make them explorable.

As people have said, we have Word of God that all the Fractals we have seen so far have taken place in the past. So when did the Uncategorised Fractal occur? Well, humans were around at that point, cause we have the bandit saboteur. I wanna say that makes it in the last few years, because bandits are a quite recent faction, but it could in this case mean “bandit” in the generic sense.

Other than that, we’ve nothing to place it. The dialogue, which is on the wiki page, is incredibly intriguing, but I won’t reproduce it here because frankly there’s nothing I can get from it, other than that Dessa seems to be aware of whatever disaster the Fractal is depicting. But that doesn’t help us much, because we don’t really know “when” Dessa is from—potentially several decades ago. My first instincts were Quora Sum or Rata Pten, but both of those were underground settlements and this does not appear to be. In fact it appears to be an outdoor settlement that strongly resembles Rata Sum.

Now, Rata Sum is the only above-ground asuran settlement that we know of—this is something I’ve spoken about before. And yet, this is seemingly another, from a past recent enough that Dessa knows what it is (the asura lost a lot of their history when Quora Sum fell, so that isn’t necessarily a given). Another twist comes when you consider that unless it was in the last 250 years or so, harpies were mainly native to Elona and Dzalana.

The only other remark I have is this: the Raving Asura, trapped inside the Fractal (it has been speculated that this may be Dessa’s boyfriend, who she mentions), uses golems who are dressed up as cats. The only other place we see this, iirc, is in the Proxemics Lab jumping puzzle.

Rouven.7409:

Tamias.7059:

(…) as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.(…)

I file this under awesome/traditional.

Bad people with big bad plans do everything larger than life and when they “defeat” the good guy momentarily they lose their momentum by explaining their genius in detail and thus giving the good guy the chance to escape.

It’s sort of a given.

But honestly my “understanding” at the time was more about distribution. Like an antenna, larger antenna larger signal.

It just frustrates me that the Tower of Nightmares came with the implicit promise that “it’ll all make sense soon…”, along with the attacks on Queen’s Jubilee and to a lesser extent, the Aetherblades. It wasn’t as bad as the Molten Alliance, which didn’t come with either any explanation or the promise of explanation (and the explanation we ended up with wasn’t exactly revelatory—what happened to that slick-talker from the city, and weren’t there hints initially that the Molten Facilities were sort of giant underground computers?), but ToN still feels like it was connected to Scarlet after the fact, even though it definitely wasn’t.

I wouldn’t have so much a problem with it if Scarlet’s dialogue when you beat her at the ToN wasn’t to the effect of “haha, I wanted to be beaten all along! This was all part of my master plan!” when it didn’t really seem to play out that way.

Huh. This got moved to the fan-generated content forum. Most of these were written by John Stumme!

I got the impression that The Dead End: A Study in Scarlet was supposed to be the “a-ha!” instance where everything comes together and we suddenly understand Scarlet’s plans. It has this to say about the Tower of Nightmares:

Marjory Delaqua: “I’ll never forget how close we came to disaster. When I think about those spores spreading their toxins across Tyria, it boils my blood.”
Kasmeer Meade: “The Nightmare Court and krait do make a volatile combination. Scarlet popped some horrifying alchemy there.”
Kasmeer Meade: “I still have nightmares about that tower. I doubt I’m the only one.”
Player: “At least Jory was able to find the antitoxin. Can we test it on this sample?”
Kasmeer Meade: “Scarlet would have spread her toxins all over Tyria if we’d let her. It’s a good thing we found the antidote. She allied with krait and Nightmare Cortiers to do so. Why would she do such a thing?”
Player: “The courtiers grew the plant, and the krait made it toxic. The combination was a poison so powerful…”
Marjory Delaqua: “This sample is resistant to the antitoxin we used against the Nightmare Tower poison.”
Kasmeer Meade: “Jory, we didn’t stop her plan. We just showed her how to make a stronger poison that could wipe out an entire city.”

So the implication is that Scarlet modified her posion to be resistant to Marjory’s antitoxin, and that she could use it against an army. Or a city. I don’t for a moment expect you accept this as a satisfactory explanation as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.

I’m not quite ready to write it off as ANet not knowing themselves where the plot was going, though—not yet, at least. The way that miasma was dispersed during the Battle for Lion’s Arch wasn’t similar at all to how the Tower of Nightmares worked, nor did the toxin have remotely similar effects. And iirc there was some dialogue in the Lornar’s Pass refugee camp that hinted that some of the hylek knew how to stop the miasma but seemed reticent to talk about it (the implication, I think, being that the miasma involved hylek alchemy and they were embarrassed to have been linked to Scarlet—remember Scarlet spent some time with the Michotl hylek). So it seems quite likely to me that the miasma isn’t actually anything to do with the Toxic Alliance, and so the Tower of Nightmares was for some other purpose. At least, I hope that’s the case, because otherwise Scarlet’s plan was even more poorly communicated than I first thought.

So if the Tower of Nightmares wasn’t built to test the miasma, then what was it for? Well, short answer is we don’t know. I’m still apprehensive that a “This is what Scarlet’s REAL plan was all along!” reveal is going to inevitably fall flat at this point regardless of how clever it is, but if I had to guess I’d say something to do with Mordremoth. But really, your guess is as good as mine.

Something I found on a former ArenaNet writer’s blog and couldn’t not share: Epic Rap Battles of Tyria! They’re written by members of GW1’s Live Team, and they’re all pretty…well, I hate the word ‘epic’ but I’m sure this qualifies. Battles include Canthan Guard vs. stick (probably my favourite), Prince Rurik vs. Kilroy Stonekin, Keiran Thackeray vs. Logan Thackeray, Mad King Thorn vs. Palawa Joko (this one is incredible).

Some other ones I found, poking around the same site:

• Gwen vs. Miku
• Nicholas the Traveller vs. Professor Yakkington (this one made me aww)
• Master Togo vs. Yijo Tahn
• King Adelbern vs. Emperor Kisu
• Brother Mhenlo vs. Winter Dwarf

Something I just noticed today, from Marjory’s story,

He buried his face in his hands. “They took a…woman…into a cellar. They used dark magic on her. She screamed, but it was silent. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes…”

“Okay. Who did this?”

For the first time, the ghost boy looked straight at me, and he said, “Minister—”

When I first read that months ago I thought “oh, interesting, a Minister practising occultic magic”. But I’ve been reading around the bandits, separatists, and White Mantle on the wiki quite a lot recently, and it struck me just now that we already have a link between the Ministry and the occult. As has been noted already, the White Mantle seem to be behind at least some (personally, I suspect most) of the bandits plaguing Kryta, even if those bandits are not aware of it. Who else has been found giving bandits orders? None other than the good Minister Julius Zamon.

Between that and what Mendel saw, we can conclude with a fair amount of confidence that the White Mantle have infiltrated the upper echelons of the Ministry. I think the Ministry’s motivation goes beyond “they miss ruling Kryta, like they did when Jennah’s father was ill”, and is more “they miss ruling Kryta, like they did 250 years ago”. Jennah has no heir; if she is taken out then the White Mantle will once again rule Kryta.

One final thing: we’re told we’ll discover the identity of “E” in season 2. That means it’s likely that the circumstances behind Mendel’s death will also be explored. Which, if it involves the White Mantle, is exactly what has been said in this thread!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Ignoring the derailing off-topic “Scarlet may be Mordremoth’s champion” theory that gets shoehorned into every topic on either, the Shadow of the Dragon is said to be a representation of Zhaitan (thus not accurate, design-wise this would be done to keep Zhaitan’s appearance hidden until later – this is likely why it highly resembles the head shape of Tequatl) by not just the Pale Tree but Caithe (iirc) and the Mender you speak to just after the tutorial, and a show of one of your two Wyld Hunts (the other chosen by your bio options).

The mention of seeing shadows of the Elder Dragon is also made on the official website for Guild Wars 2, which says a few sylvari who’s Wyld Hunts deal directly with the Elder Dragons and their strongest champions will see this shadow of the Dragon in question. So chances are it is Zhaitan, since we eventually go to kill him (and others go to fight other Dragon minions). Though it should be noted that what the Pale Tree actually says in regards to the PCs Wyld Hunt, is not just to kill Zhaitan, but to save Tyria multiple times, including against Zhaitan.

Yeah, I can really see how discussion of a “Scarlet may be Mordremoth’s champion” theory is pretty off-topic here, in the “Mordremoth’s champion?” thread :P anyway, the Shadow of the Dragon’s head shape probably just comes from the fact that it’s a reskin of Tequatl. Doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. All the dragon-shaped dragon champions have the same rigging, and if you’re designing a boss that’s only going to be in a single area, you’re not going to bother with a new mesh.

Caithe’s exact words are “Be brave, sapling. There is a darkness here, a poison intruding on the Dream. You must show courage, and be a beacon in the darkness.” (“intruding” implies the Shadow of the Dragon is something not originally of the Dream, so not a vision). Where does Serimon say Zhaitan? On the wiki page for Fighting the Nightmare, he only says “a dragon”. In any event, he’s not going to be privy to any information that Caithe and the Pale Tree are not.

We also have that the yellow-orange glow that pervades the Shadow of the Dragon is strongly reminiscent of the Summoned Husks. If it’s connected to any Elder Dragon, then, it’d be Mordremoth, not Zhaitan. Incidentally, that same glow is seen on Scarlet’s corpse, although that one’s a bit more tenuous since the resemblance isn’t as strong.

Kalavier.1097:

At least this is better then the crazy theory crafting I saw ingame about the Shadow of the Dragon actually appearing as a new world megaboss with the jungle dragon awakening…

If we have dragon champion world bosses for Mordremoth (which we almost certainly will), then they’ll have the same appearance as the Shadow of the Dragon, because why bother creating another giant plant dragon model when you’ve already got one? When that happens, there’ll be no choice but to explain the Shadow of the Dragon as a reflection of Mordremoth, since “we know this guy looks like all Mordremoth’s champions, but he’s actually Zhaitan” is convoluted and confusing.

So in a way, we probably will see it as a new world megaboss :P

As others have said, that’s ‘a shadow of a terrible dragon’, found within the Dream of Dreams. Caithe says its presence was caused by the Nightmare Court, who wished to harm the sleepers (one of the few explicit links between the NC and dragons). The Pale Tree had a different interpretation:

I fear that it is. A Wyld Hunt is a sacred thing, a burden placed by the Dream upon the strongest and the bravest of my children. In your Dream, you fought an Elder Dragon face-to-face. Only two of my children have had such a dream. You, and Caithe. All sylvari fight the dragon’s servants, the undead, but I believe you will face Zhaitan itself. I also believe you will prevail.

It’s worth noting that the Pale Tree isn’t the creator of the Dream; she is just its caretaker. So although she has more knowledge of it than anyone else, what she says is still just an interpretation, which is why she says she “believes” that the Valiant will face Zhaitan.

I think both of them are probably wrong, and the true answer is one of two possibilities:

1. The Shadow of the Dragon is a manifestation of the Valiant’s Wyld Hunt, but that Wyld Hunt is not to defeat Zhaitan but the Elder Dragons in general. So the player’s Wyld Hunt isn’t “over” with the end of the personal story, but spans the entire story of Guild Wars 2.
2. The Shadow of the Dragon is a champion of Mordremoth, who is there spreading Nightmare. One of the few things that is not disputed about Mordremoth is that he is associated with Nightmare (Nightmare Hounds and Nightmare Husks are both strong candidates for minions of Mordremoth). So it wouldn’t be strange to see such a creature in the Dream. Besides, a lot of work went into creating that model, which unlike the models for the other bosses in the PS tutorial instances, isn’t used again, so I doubt they’d create such a thing if they didn’t plan to use it again :P

The more interesting question is this: was Scarlet a champion of Mordremoth? According to Faolain, one of the ways to tell that an Elder Dragon is rising soon is by watching for a champion, who prepares for their arrival. That’s what the Great Destroyer was doing, and Drakkar was doing it for Jormag for almost a century (hence Svanir).

Scarlet (and by extension, the entity controlling her, if you accept that it was controlling her) absolutely was responsible for the awakening of Mordremoth, but here’s the thing—Mordremoth was awakened several decades prior to when it “should” have. If Scarlet was a dragon champion, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

I still think Scarlet’s plan somehow involved stopping, or weakening the dragon. Putting the entity aside for a moment, consider Scarlet’s final words to Omadd:

It worked. I suppose I should thank you for that, though I bet I would have figured it out on my own eventually. Still, no reason to begrudge a genius his due, right?

So much makes sense now. The Pale Tree, the Nightmare Court, Caithe and Faolain…it’s all part of a grand design. But I see the flaws in that design. My people don’t have to take what we’re given, or be what we were “born to be.” No people do. We can change the rules…well, I can. And I’m going to.

I’ve learned so much. Now I have to put that knowledge to use. An insurmountable challenge is rising, and my people have been called to meet it. We are compelled by our creator to do so.

But I reject that call. I reject the notion that that I must choose the Dream or be lost to Nightmare. The forces that push us this way or that can be redirected. They can be set against one another to the detriment of both, and now I know how.

I have a great deal of work ahead of me. I don’t know what the world will be when I’m through, but I will very much enjoy finding out. Empires will fall, continents will burn, and when the conflagration is over, I’ll be there to put my stamp on whatever new world this one becomes.

Good-bye, old friend. All good students should take up their master’s mantle and share the wisdom they’ve attained. And I am a very, very good student.

In particular, “[The forces that push us this way or that] can be set against one another to the detriment of both”. I get the impression that, at this point at least, Scarlet saw herself as a liberator of sylvari, someone who would free them from their destiny (which is to fight for or against the Elder Dragons, depending on whether you ask Mordremoth or the Pale Tree). Whether this was still the case at the time of the Battle for Lion’s Arch is debatable, but one thing that I am confident in is that ANet needn’t have bothered with that story if Scarlet had been enthralled to the Elder Dragons the whole time.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

OP is not imagining this. A lot of people have pointed out this happening in areas where there is no external cause. There was a discussion about it a while back, it might have been in the lore forum but I don’t recall.

You are correct

Tom.8029:

In Guild Wars Prophecies near Lion’s Arch, there was a disturbance that resembled a tremor that resulted in a hole in the ground and the beginning of Guild Wars: Eye of the North and the arrival of a new foe known as the Destroyers. There may be no connection. But I felt like I should mention it.

Yes, the Destroyers, the minions of Primordus, the first Elder Dragon to rise. Eye of the North took place in 1078 AE, the year that Primordus was originally supposed to awaken, but by killing the final boss, the Great Destroyer, we the players set back his awakening by a generation. We assumed the earthquakes were due to the Destroyers, but then we didn’t know any better at the time.

Here’s what the novel, Edge of Destiny, has to say on the matter:

Tyria should have known. The signs of the dragonrise were everywhere.
The earthquake that shook Rata Sum.
The tidal wave that carried ships into the streets of Lion’s Arch.
The geysers that erupted in the tundra beyond Hoelbrak.
The pall that hung over the Black Citadel.
Tyria had been wracked by such terrible birth pangs before.
The people should have guessed a dragon was rising.

This was in 1320 AE, 5 years before the start of the personal story and 7 years before present day. Prior to this, earthquakes and tidal waves were thought to be characteristic omens of Primordus and Zhaitan, respectively, but by the sounds of it they’re portents of any dragon rising—in conjunction, at least.

But all of these things happened before Kralkatorrik awoke. Mordremoth is awake now (or maybe he isn’t—maybe he’s just stirring, like Primordus was in 1078 AE). In any event, these birth pangs can only be a result of Scarlet’s actions, rather than a foreshadowing of their consequences. Mordremoth wasn’t “supposed” to awaken just yet—we delayed Primordus’ awakening by 42 years, and every Elder Dragon thereafter awoke within 50 ± 5 of the last…until now. Whatever Scarlet’s plan was, it involved awakening the dragon much, much earlier than it should have. We return to Canach’s dialogue, whilst imprisoned in Vigil’s Keep:

Canach: “So, you’ve killed Scarlet. I suppose you think you’re a hero. Tell me, did she say anything before you snuffed her out?”
Player: “She said Tyria would bow to a new master.”
Canach: “Speaking from experience, no one goes to these lengths without thinking they are doing some good. It raises a troubling question.”
Player: “Which is?”
Canach:“What good did she think she was doing?”
Player: “I can’t say.”

kokuou.9537:

Tamias.7059:

So I was poking around concept art websites (again), and found this page on Naomi Baker.

Is that first page you linked where you found the actual image? Because I just checked it now and can’t find the image you attached to your post. Perhaps someone caught wind of it and had it removed? xD

Ha! Yes, it was. Looks like it’s been removed now. There must be something to this then :P

applecup.3047:

Nightmare Court weapons from TA glow purple. /shrug

IIRC, the Court also already have a presence in Brisban, and I suspect that they would welcome Mordy’s corruption with open arms, at least at first. See it as a way to spread further havoc in the Dream, and all that. At least until Mordy/Mordy’s minions show the same courtesy to the Courtiers that they do to everyone else.

It sounds like you’re proposing that the Nightmare Court would readily be some sort of Sons of Svanir-type organisation, but for the sylvari. Actually, the Nightmare Court was founded in order to fight the Elder Dragons. Its founder, Cadeyrn, believed that the Ventari Tablet was, to make a long story short, making the sylvari weak, and that its influence could be removed by committing depraved acts (which would be added to the collective memory of the sylvari, thereby making the Dream a darker place and “correcting” for the influence of the Ventari Tablet). Of course, as we know from Malyck, a sylvari without a Dream is not, by default, evil.

That’s not to say that the Nightmare Court aren’t related to Mordremoth, though. Scarlet Briar’s journal, as well as several other sources, suggests that the dragon spreads its corruption via nightmare, for example. It’s just that the Nightmare Court don’t seem aware that what they’re doing plays into Mordremoth’s hands. They are similar to dragon minions in that once you fall to Nightmare, you never go back. Nobody ever defects from the Nightmare Court—incredible, when you think that even the Sons of Svanir have their defectors. But to have the amount of free will that Nightmare Court members possess, according to Professor Gorr’s theory of draconic enchanto-consumption they’d all have to be extraordinarily powerful minions, which simply isn’t something we on an individual level with the Nightmare Court.

You’re right about the Nightmare weapons from Twilight Arbor, though. They glow the same bright purple we seem here, so perhaps the case for their involvement is much stronger than I originally thought. What do we know about existing Nightmare Court activity in the Brisban Wildlands? Well, last we heard they were attempting to form a Sinister Triad with the Inquest and, don’t you know it, the bandits, who were suggested by Seraph Belinda Delaqua to be currently disrupting the economy of Divinity’s Reach.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

If that were connected to mordremoth then that would confirm the nightmare court’s connection to the dragon. Or they just really like the same designs.

It should be noted that we don’t really know what Mordremoth’s corruption looks like yet (if I had to guess, I’d say something like this, this, or this). All of those are strong contenders for minions of Mordremoth, as they’re all active at sites that are suspected to be related to jungle dragon corruption, but the Nightmare Court are almost always conspicuously absent at those same sites.

That bright glowing purple isn’t consistent with any of the suspected Mordremoth minions so far, either in-game or in concept art. Nor is it really that close to what we see from the Nightmare Court, if you ask me—purple is definitely a common part of the Nightmare Court design palette, but I can’t remember ever seeing it glow like that before. It reminds me more of Branded, to tell you the truth.

Kasima.8143:

Tamias.7059:

Just one question: did you buy all the Guild Wars campaigns and expansions, before buying Guild Wars 2?

What, are you going to say that my post is somewhat invalid if I tell you I didn’t? A reply like yours was so previsible that I actually called it the moment I clicked Reply on my previous post. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy

Well…

When I play a game or a series of games, I start with the first one and play them in chronological order because THAT is how you get immersed.

So…yes?

The Living World is just that: living. Stuff happens, and then it’s over. Do I wish more of that stuff would have a permanent impact on the world? Yes. Do I wish that I could go back and play through the events that caused those changes? Hell no! That’d just be another personal story. That, to me, is immersion-breaking, and destroys any appeal that a “Living World” would have in the first place.

So the problem is different people find different things immersive, so as a developer, going back to what you said about the nirvana fallacy, there’s no way you’re going to be able to please everyone. So you have to make a choice. That is the nature of all games.

By the sounds of it, you knew what Guild Wars 2 was before you purchased it, that is, a game with a Living World. So to me you have less of a claim to being aggrieved than those who bought it earlier, to whom it was not advertised as a Living World because that idea had not been yet thought up. You bought the game in spite of what you knew about the Living World (meaning that other aspects must have been weighted enough to tip you in favour), and then you come to the forums asking for that feature, which you had known about before purchasing, to be changed?

So yeah, you can’t play through the instances of the Living World season 1, any more than I can’t play through the Exodus of the Gods or the charr rebellion. But that, to me, makes it all the more immersive. There are plenty of story summaries and YouTube videos—it’s not like you’ll ever not know what happened.

Kasima.8143:

Heraldusluminare.2946:

I think expecting GW2 to release all Living World content is a little like paying for cable TV, and expecting a show to start from the first episode on demand.

That’s why I don’t pay for cable and use Amazon and Netflix instead. There is absolutely no reason why GW2 can’t be like Amazon or Netflix with its content.

I verly much like Arantheal.7396’s suggestion above of making it a guild thing. It would give some purpose back to guilds that they lost with the megaservers.

Amazon Prime and Netflix are both streaming services with monthly fees. Again, what you “want” from Guild Wars 2 seems to be antithetical to the fundamental principles behind the game’s design, so of course you’re going to be disappointed.

So I was poking around concept art websites (again), and found this page on Naomi Baker. For those of you who don’t know, Naomi is one of the concept artists who has been working on the Living World, along with Jamie Ro, Theo Prins, and Ruan Jia. Her work can be seen here.

Anyway, not all of the art on that page is relevant to Guild Wars 2, and since I was looking for art to upload to the wiki, I was looking at the filenames to try and figure out which ones are relevant to Guild Wars 2 and which ones aren’t. Some of them had ‘ka’ in the name, which it seems is an abbreviation for ‘key art’, ANet’s internal term for the “main” concept art for a given release. One piece in particular caught my eye, attached beneath, called Naomi_Baker_Concept_Art_Illustration_Guild_Wars_2_ka_brisban.jpg, which I didn’t recognise. This appears to be ‘key art’ for a release involving the Brisban Wildlands, which of course is where Belinda Delaqua had stated she would be being deployed to soon.

So it looks like, as many of you have already guessed, we’ll be going to the Brisban Wildlands next. What’s new is the little preview of the release’s aesthetic we’re getting. Those little huts in the back look like the familiar Maguuma structures from Guild Wars, and the purple tint and thorns are something we’re also used to seeing, from the Nightmare Court. My suspicion, though, given that the image is framed like we’re sitting in a giant maw looking outward through an enormous pair of teeth, is that they’re a product of something a bit more sinister — Mordremoth.

My prediction? We’ll be seeing a lot more of the immediate consequences of Scarlet’s actions. When Primordus awoke, the asura and all the other races of the Depths were forced to the surface and all their cities were destroyed. When Jormag awoke, it created inland sekittentered mountains, and forced the norn south. When Zhaitan woke, the continent of Orr was brought to the surface, and a tidal wave devastated the coast of Kryta. When Kralkatorrik awoke, the Dragonbrand cleaved the entire region of Ascalon clean in half, causing both Almorra’s Massacre and the Ogre Revolt. What I’m saying is that every Elder Dragon that has risen so far has brought with it immediate catastrophe, and we have no reason to believe that this one is any different.

When will we see this content? Well, I didn’t realise that the April 2014 Feature Pack wasn’t kicking off season 2, so I was surprised to not see a trailer the Tuesday after that and a release the week after that. Given that we’re now into May with no word, I would say we should not expect to see this content before May 15th at the very earliest, since that is when the Chinese open beta begins. It wouldn’t make sense for ArenaNet to launch a new storyline weeks before launching the game in a new region—this way, Chinese players can begin the new storyline at the same time as North American and European players, otherwise they’d be thrown into the midst of an ongoing story at launch. The other possibility is that the new content won’t come until the Chinese launch, which as far as I know has no set date yet. If this happens, I expect that the big update to the personal story will come at the same time, so that the personal story makes sense alongside the Living World for Chinese players.

Kasima.8143:

I think that making such content time limited is a horrible idea. There is currently nothing to do of importance in PvE and it could really use some living story reliving. It especially sucks when you’ve bought the game after it all happened and there is no way of living it ever. There is absolutely no appeal in it at all. Do you like picking up TV shows in the middle? I don’t. I’m pretty sure that what people think when seeing they’ve missed a bunch of really cool content they won’t ever be able to play isn’t “Oh shoot, I better start playing fast!”, but “Well, that sucks a LOT”. Starting off with a resentment toward a game isn’t a good thing.

It weighted against the game when I decided whether or not I should buy it, because who the hell likes to pick up a story in the middle? I don’t. When I play a game or a series of games, I start with the first one and play them in chronological order because THAT is how you get immersed. Are you saying that new players shouldn’t get the chance of getting as immersed in the universe as old players? Because that’s exactly how it is right now and you seem to think it’s a good idea. To make it so only a handful of players can go “Oh, do you remember that?” at the expense of all new players? It’s a horrible idea.

What I think Anet should do is put these reliving events on schedule and make them happen once or twice a year before new living story content comes out.

Just one question: did you buy all the Guild Wars campaigns and expansions, before buying Guild Wars 2?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Nightfall does occur, which is what the prophecy is about, so the prophecy, though not fully (Abaddon couldn’t return to the world of Tyria personally), was fulfilled.

Nightfall is specifically the return of Abaddon to Tyria, which never happened (although it came close). There’s also dialogue or official text somewhere referring to the Ascension of Kormir, which says that had she not absorbed Abaddon’s power when he was defeated, Nightfall would have happened regardless, which would suggest that it had not happened yet. This seems relatively unimportant, though.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Mystic Telescope isn’t a prophecy, nor divination of any kind. It’s a study of historical events to create a pattern.

We’re in disagreement anyway on how the stars work in Tyria, but in any case this method of “pattern matching” is no different to any of the Sky Scholars’ prophecies involving stars. Interestingly, Varra Skylark’s description of jotun astronomy matches up pretty closely with what Bahltek says about the night sky in Tyria, namely “The gods can be seen in the heavens… to varying degrees. They’ve emblazoned their marks upon the firmament, and these marks are not constant”. This supports the conclusions in the Varajar Fells notebook that the gods are somehow facets of nature, analogous to the Elder Dragons.

Anyway, this is a prophecy in the sense that it is a prediction about the future. Whether or not it is discerned by “scientific” means is asking the wrong question, since in Tyria magic and science are intertwined (for example, the asura).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As for missed prophecies, I can only think of one off the top of my head, though I’m not sure if the first really counts as a prophecy:

“Do not leave us. Palawa Joko will rise again, and we must prepare to fight him. Forever…”
“I fear the powers rising in the Crystal Desert. I feel Palawa Joko’s fingers in the sand, counting the hours we have left on this world.”
“The Dynasties still live in my dreams. There is another true-blooded heir…”

Lines said by Dynastic Spirits The first obviously came about, the second could be interpreted in multiple ways (even talking about the darkness the Desert Gate Guard refers to), and the last could be referring to a descendent of Turai or the Primeval Kings living, perhaps (former less likely given the name of the NPC).

And another after doublechecking: “The Crystal Desert will become a Crystal Sea… when the stars align and the darkness lifts.”

Said by Sky Scholars who prophecize via reading the stars. One could say this refers to Joko damming the Elon and the large river forming in the Crystal Desert, other lines often refer to Varesh and Abaddon (indirectly) as a darkness, thus this event would take place post-Nightfall.

Good catch, I’ll add those to the article.

This more or less already exists

Honestly, I think the time-sensitive nature of the living world is part of the appeal, immersion-wise. We can look back at things and say, “oh, do you remember that?”, which’d never be possible if the living story were just a personal story with extra missions continuously being added. The fact that some content is temporary encourages players considering trying out the game to buy sooner rather than later, and keeps veteran players continuously logging on. I like the idea of it. The execution, on the other hand, what with making the personal story make sense with it, communicating exactly what was happening, and balancing the in-game rewards with gem store items has been tricker than I’m sure was initially anticipated.

EDIT: By the way, if it’s a catch-up on the story that you’re after, then there’s a good one here, on the wiki. I’m currently trying to think of a way of making it somehow more prominent on the wiki, to make more people aware of its existence. Let us know if you have any ideas!

In attempting to work out the set of “rules” that govern divination, precognition, foresight, whatever you want to call it in the world of Guild Wars 2, I wrote a wiki article detailing every prophecy, as-of-yet unfulfilled legend, or augury I could think of. But I’m sure there’s some I’ve missed, so what I ask is this: can anyone think of any more prophecies (that is, predictions of the future) in Tyria that I may have missed?

Something I noticed today rereading Ghosts of Ascalon: when General Soulkeeper is telling the story of the founding of the Vigil, she gives a lengthy and detailed exposition on the killing of her warsiblings, but has only this to say about what actually led her to found the Vigil:

I became a gladium, a charr without a warband, and refused any aid in my darkness. At last, with the help of a few unlikely allies, I came to myself and knew what had to be done.

“A few unlikely allies”? Sounds like there’s a tale to be told there. Specifically, a rousing tale of disparate races learning to put their differences aside to fight a greater evil, and learning something about themselves on the way. Sounds almost like a Guild Wars novel. I’m sure we’ll hear more of it in the future

But who are these unlikely allies? Well, Laranthir of the Wild is a safe bet. And according to Elisabet Kardijn, Warmaster Efut, Lord Rodrigo (who?), and Jhavi Jorasdottir are all leaders of the Vigil as well as Almorra and Laranthir, so they’re all in as well.

Anyone else? Well, there’s the Canthan Shu Arai and the tengu Fuji Shadowbane, both of whom are, like all the above NPC’s, veteran-ranked, are inside the Vigil Headquarters, and are “characters” in the sense that they don’t wear Vigil uniforms and don’t have “traditional” backgrounds—as in, their may be more to their stories. These last two are more tenuous, but don’t discount them just yet.

My question is this: what else do we know about these characters? I suspect that like the story of Trahearne and Sayeh al’Rajihd, there’s just not enough information available yet to piece together the full truth about how this group of allies came together, but it doesn’t hurt to make enquiries.

I’ll start: the character that intrigues me the most is Lord Rodrigo. He is a human noble who is apparently in occasional contact with the Krytan Queen Jennah, and yet he hails from a place called Cormoch. Where is Cormoch? Well, we don’t really know, because it’s never been mentioned by anyone else in a Guild Wars game—ever. I guess it could be some obscure lordship somewhere in Kryta, but I’m going to suggest something a little more interesting.

Who is, to my memory at least, the only other NPC with a hispanic-inspired name such as Rodrigo? Why, it’s our favourite Order of Whispers Preceptor Doern Velazquez! And where is he from? Well, it’s not Kryta, that’s for sure—he barely seems aware that such a place exists (which is pretty bad form for a Precptor if you ask me, but whatever). The player character can observe that he doesn’t look Elonian, and “Velazquez” hardly seems like a Canthan name, so I’m going to propose that the good Preceptor, like Rodrigo, is a son of Cormoch, wherever that may be. And I’m going to go a step further, and propose that Cormoch was the “fourth continent”, the planned setting of the cancelled Guild Wars Utopia.

What evidence do I have for this last proposal? Well, not much, if I’m honest. Only that Utopia was originally to take aesthetic inspiration from Aztec architecture and culture, in the same way that Factions was designed with a blend of Asiatic cultures in mind, and Nightfall had a North African feel to it. A Spanish-inspired human culture would not be out of place on such a continent. Furthermore, many of the assets from Utopia were later used in the Tarnished Coast in Eye of the North, which is where a lot of the asuran buildings good their look and feel, and ArenaNet have been reluctant to talk much about Utopia in case some of the ideas make it into future games. I think we might just have found what happened to those ideas.

It’s quite possible that Adelbern’s feelings toward the Krytans played a role in some way, either as punishment for the Vanguard for fleeing to Kryta with Rurik, or trying to keep them away from the Krytans, having heard of the Vanguard’s involvement with the Krytan civil war (although Captain Langmar’s death should be motivation enough for the Vanguard in that regard).

In either event, I’m convinced the disappearance of Evennia would be somehow important to Adelbern’s decision. Maybe it was her who warned of the impending threat, whatever it may be? But then how would she know, and why the vanishing act?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t see why Logan wouldn’t know that Rurik crossed the Shiverpeaks, when it seems to be common Ascalon Settlement knowledge, and it’s even talked about in the Plaza of Kormir loosely, iirc (as well as King Jalis’ Refuge jp in Snowden by Priory members). The Ring of Fire part, sure, but Rurik dying in the Shiverpeaks sounds as common as Hitler and Eagle Nest – not every tom, kitten, and harry will know but it’s easily accessible knowledge.

There’s also the possibility that Logan isn’t making assumptions, which was my whole point. We cannot simply write him off as “he’s presuming.”

There’s the possibility, sure, but what evidence do you have of that? If he did somehow know, we’d see more evidence of that than a throwaway line. The balance of probability, in my view, was that Logan was either presuming or being hyperbolic there.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Frosch.7809:

I see no reason to assume that Undead Rurik wasn’t wielding Sohothin during the final mission of Prophecies. Its last known location was therefore most likely the Ring of Fire islands, and it must have been taken away from there.

Logan saying that the sword was plundered from Ascalon is reason enough to me. Fullproof? No. But support for the possibility.

I think Logan is probably just making an assumption there. Logan isn’t any more likely to have the knowledge of Sohothin’s journey that players do (across the Shiverpeaks, lost at Abaddon’s Mouth, etc.) than he is to know exactly how Rytlock came about Sohothin. And why would Logan know how Rytlock obtained Sohothin? Neither of them were known to each other before, neither were particularly notable, and if the rediscovery of Sohothin in Ascalon was a big deal then someone else would have mentioned it.

I don’t think a single line, devoid of context, is enough to seriously entertain the notion that Rurik’s sword after his exile was “fake” while the real one remained in Ascalon.

Kalavier.1097:

An option also is that he simply was crazy and wanted the Vanguard out of the picture since it was obvious some people started questioning his rule of the remains of the nation.

And since the Vanguard was so popular…

The Vanguard were already out of the picture – in the Far Shiverpeaks, they were further away than they were in Ebonhawke, and what’s more were actually disrupting the charr offensive from behind enemy lines. It doesn’t make political or tactical sense to recall them to Ascalon and put as much distance between the charr and them as possible.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Hard to say, but I find it hard to believe that Rata Sum’s ruins are mursaat made when confirmed asuran made structures that predate their founding of Rata Sum appear just like those “unknown” structures.

Wouldn’t be the only case of inconsistency in lore.

No, it wouldn’t be – there are still glaring errors like mentions of Kormir all over Orr, and statues that say the Dragonbrand existed over two years before it did. So how do we explain this inconsistency? What is the error in this case? That the pre-1078 asuran structures also resemble the ruins in the jungle, or that there is a mention of asuran architecture in a White Mantle base?

I’m going to go for the former. The asuran assets in GW:EN were most likely recycled from Utopia and so went through a very convoluted process between initial creation and actually getting into the game. Inconsistency or no, the book on asuran architecture in the Mantle base strikes me as a very intentional hint.

draxynnic.3719:

Red herring. Not every book there has to be directly mursaat-related. The book could have been there before the White Mantle decided to use the place as a hideout, or Esthel may have had the book for purely practical reasons rather than having any connection between the asura and the mursaat.

It’s also worth noting that the “bandits” in the Sinister Triad are likely Mantle (at least the ultimate leaders) and they have an alliance with the Inquest that involves using Inquest technology, including defensive turrets. Thus, one easy explanation is that Esthel wanted to study up on asuran design principles to better understand devices that she may have been planning to acquire from the Inquest after the mission the orphan PC foiled.

If we accept for a moment that it is a red herring, that is, a fake “clue” intended to distract us, then the question becomes why? Why drop hints all over the place that the ruins along the Tarnished Coast are mursaat ruins, if the truth is the far less interesting revelation that the ruins are just a forgotten asuran surface expedition. That wouldn’t strike me as very good storytelling.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Linsey only says (with confirmation) that they were built by a magical civilization.

Asura have a magical civilization. So it’s not like Linsey says they cannot be asuran.

The anagram is likely just Anet putting a nod to the player’s love of mursaat – which I feel was mentioned once somewhere though I haven’t a clue where. Or it could be pure happenstance given that Rata Sum is latin for “I (have) verified/ratified.”

And Linsey suggesting Orrian, Seer, or mursaat honestly tells me “it’s not these three” – because why would she give it away? Anet loves teasing, and that line is certainly a teasing line.

I don’t buy that the anagram is a mere nod, given the presence of other clues that hint to a link between mursaat and asura, and I definitely don’t buy that the anagram was a coincidence. And how do you explain the books on asuran architecture at a White Mantle hideout?

“Rata Sum” is an asuran name in lore terms, sure, but in real-world terms it was created by an ArenaNet writer. Someone decided to make the asuran capital an anagram of ‘mursaat’ – why?

I think I was the first person (although I could easily be wrong) to point out that current asuran architecture seems to be similar to that of Rata Sum of 250 years ago, which as we know belongs to some older civilization. There was some other dialogue in GW1 that explains that the asura settled Rata Sum because the walls already existed, the asura just had to fortify them and set up the geomystical generators, but I can’t for the life of me find it. But Linsey provides the most compelling evidence, anyway.

But you’re right to say that these ruins resemble examples of asuran architecture that predate 1078 AE, when the asura arrived at the surface. And you’re also right to say that these ruins don’t resemble any of the mursaat’s Jade structures. So there’s an inconsistency there.

If these two facts were all we knew about the matter, then the most reasonable explanation would indeed be that the ruins were simply remnants of a forgotten asuran surface expedition, and have nothing to do with the mursaat. But ‘Rata Sum’ is an anagram of ‘mursaat’, Linsey does suggest Orrian, Seer, or mursaat origins for the ruiins (and we know it isn’t Orrian), and, perhaps most compellingly of all, in GW2 when the player raids a White Mantle base, books are found on Krytan history, bloodstones, and…asuran architecture. If asuran architecture doesn’t have its basis in mursaat culture, then someone at ArenaNet certainly wants us to think otherwise.

drax, while we’re on the subject of connectedness to the Mists, I was wondering if there was any way that the Rage of Koda tied into your ideas?

Here is a short list of candidates that I can think of off the top of my head, and a brief assessment of the viability of each one. I did not manage to find a satisfactory explanation.

• Charr. The Vanguard did indeed encounter charr on their journey south, and Adelbern would be sensible to view them as Ascalon’s biggest threat. And the charr’s attack was preceded by discovery of an animal that’d been torn to shreds (not the charr’s M.O., but whatever), so if that’s what Adelbern was afraid of then that means it was around in 1080. But the Vanguard never expected to find charr so far south (Adelbern could have been embarrassed at his failure to defend the south, I suppose), and are unable to explain their presence there. “Were they leftovers from the failed assault against Orr?”, Kimmes speculates. Doubtful, but charr coming in from the Scavenger’s Causeway is the only explanation for why Adelbern would want a fortification at the mouth of the Crystal Desert, if the threat was charr. But could a lost group of charr, almost a decade after the Cataclysm, pose a credible threat? And how would Adelbern know about them? This one raises more questions than it answers.
• Ogres. The bulk of these guys arrive in Ascalon sometime between GW1 and GW2, and there’s a good chance we’ve already met them in the Crystal Desert (well, the Desolation). There’s a bunch of them near Ebonhawke in modern times, and we know that they began their push into Ascalon when it was first controlled by the humans (so, within 10 years of the end of GW1). But most of the ogres we see in Ascalon only got there after the Dragonbrand was created, and they came from the Blazeridge Mountains (so, the east), not the south. And how would Adelbern know of this threat, anyway? Reply hazy, try again.
• Forgotten. Can you tell we’re onto the less probable ideas yet? The Forgotten once inhabited Ascalon, warred with the charr in the foothills of the Blazeridge Mountains, and were ultimately pushed out by the humans. Those that remain also largely dwell in the Desert. But we know the Forgotten aren’t exactly territorial, have never mentioned invading Ascalon before, and are weakened to the extent that they couldn’t pose a credible threat to anyone.
• Branded. The minions of Kralkatorrik, these are the dragon minions most active in Ascalon. It’s plausible that Adelbern could have somehow learned of their coming (there seems to be plenty of ancient prophecies about). But Kralkatorrik came from the north, and the Branded appear to be slowly making their way south, so placing a settlement between them and the only known passage south wouldn’t seem like a very sensible tactical choice. They are headed in the direction this “threat” would be coming from, so they could be related, but are the Branded themselves the threat? Outlook not so good.
• Risen. Again, could attack from south, and appear in some ancient prophecy. It’s been suggested since the Movement of the World that the Risen had some presence in the Desert. But other than some Risen creatures, like the giants (and possibly giganticus lupicus) that could have come from the Desert, there was never anything to suggest this in-game.
• Palawa Joko’s awakened army. Not too likely, but a kitten sight more plausible than some of the suggestions above. They certainly are a threat (although Joko seems more intent on conquering Elona than Ascalon, though that could just be due to the difficulty of getting past Branded and/or Risen forces in the northern Desert), and they do of course come from the south. And they were around at the time of Guild Wars, so it’s quite possible that Adelbern somehow learned of Joko’s plans and wanted to stymie an invasion attempt. But Joko’s plans wouldn’t come to fruition until 50-60 years later, and when they did, they caught the Elonian provinces unprepared. I can’t see Adelbern, a king not exactly known for his shrewdness, learning of and reacting to the threat of Palawa Joko before the Order of Whispers or the Order of the Sunspears, can you?
• Foefire ghosts. This is the least intriguing possibility, because it would involve a disappointingly large amount of what-could’ve-been foreshadowing, but I suppose it is possible. Adelbern could have sent the Ebon Vanguard to the far south with some settlers and craftsmen so they would be out of range of the Foefire. They could keep the spirit of Ascalon alive in the south while the charr struggled with the former human lands. Former human lands, sure, but not charr lands either. He just didn’t anticipate the determination of the charr to reclaim Ascalon for themselves. This possibility counts on Adelbern having quite a bit more foresight and pragmatism than he is known to display, and would have basically amounted to accepting defeat a decade earlier than he is currently thought to have.

Check out the text of the Founding, in particularly Volumes III, IV, VII, VIII. The purpose of the Ebon Vanguard’s recall and subsequent redeployment in 1080 AE, not long after the events of the Winds of Change “release” in Guild Wars Beyond, was to defend against an enemy from the south that King Adelbern warned was coming. A threat so dire, apparently, that it warranted recalling Ascalon’s finest from the Blood Legion Homelands and preventing them from undermining the charr further.

What was this threat, and how did Adelbern know about it? Moreover, why didn’t anyone else know about it? At this point in time, a mere 10 years before the Foefire, Adelbern’s word is untrustworthy. His heir is dead, his kingdom is in ruins. But this idea didn’t come out of nowhere, and it’s definitely worth further investigation. Certainly, dark events have now befallen the Desert, so his prediction was correct at least in that regard. And the Rise of Ebonhawke would probably have been depicted in Guild Wars Beyond had that continued, which would also have addressed the disappearance of Evennia in Old Ascalon at the conclusion of the Krytan Civil War. So we can assume that those two are somehow linked as well.

So yeah. Anyone else got any ideas? Why we’re on Ebonhawke-related mysteries, by the way, what’s the deal with the abandoned mining village that the Vanguard found there? The kingdom of Ascalon never reached that far south as far as I’m aware, and it’s never mentioned in GW1 (not surprising, as it was a discovery to the Vanguard as well).

The architecture of the buildings is kinda Ascalonian, although that could just be due to modifications made by the settlers. The metal used for the roofing looks to be the same as that of the Deldrimor dwarves, but if it is Deldrimor steel (possible, so close to the mountains), those buildings certainly weren’t built for dwarves. If its inhabitants were non-human, Kimmes didn’t find it remarkable enough to comment on when Nola Sheppard dug up all their corpses (Volume XVII). Where else have we seen that greenish metal? Thre’s the [url=http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:"Wizard_Tower"_concept_art.jpg]tower in Wizard’s Folly[/url], another southern Ascalonian landmark with as-of-yet unexplained architecture (although my guess is Seers on this one). The Eye of the North has a greenish appearance in some screenshots, but I can’t recall whether it actually has that or whether it’s just the lighting. Metal of a similar colour is also seen at the Temples of Grenth and Balthazar, but like the others it doesn’t match the construction at Ebonhawke.

Dustfinger.9510:

Calling Razah a demon is like saying that Mylack is Nightmare Court, only, he just happens to be good. That doesn’t make sense since the base standard is Mylack and the corrupted version is the courtiers.

Since demons are corrupted versions, I’d say Razah isn’t a demon but that demons are evil (due to corruption) versions of beings like Razah. I’d question why we are trying to make the evil and confirmed corrupted version of the creatures as the standard.

And the definition a-net has supplied specifically states that demons are corrupted and evil. Motivated to feed on the misery they cause. if razah doesn’t fit that definition then he isn’t a demon. No matter what other relation is there.

edit; changed the example from “sylvari” to “mylack” for accuracy.

Demons are, by definition, evil, yes – but corrupted? Demons are created the way they are, sometimes in a mockery of existing beings (although I suspect this was mainly to save ANet’s 3D modellers from having to create new meshes), sure, but they aren’t created by taking those beings and twisting them (with the exception of the Margonites). All I am stating is that the sylvari according to this theory, and Razah, are demons in a sense. Not necessarily demons, but they could become demons through their actions (so the Nightmare Court would qualify as demons, I suppose). But all this is semantics, really. The crux of the argument over whether or not the Elder Dragons are demons really rests on whether they come from the Mists or not, rather than what terminology we decide to use for Razah.

Dustfinger.9510:

The mists are the building blocks of reality. Not everything in the mists is demonic. The link says that demons come from shards of existence that get corrupted.

edit: The lore says razah specifically isn’t a demonic entity. Though, the similarities between Razah and the sylvari seem suspiciously similar.

“The protomatter that makes up the Mists strains toward creation, often spawning demonic creations in nightmarish forms. Not all creatures from the Mists are demonic, however. When the Mists come into contact with a suitable human template, for example, it can copy that form, creating a sentient entity with humanoid appearance and an almost human mind.”

“Razah is one such creation. It has sprung into being a fully-formed adult. It has the knowledge and capabilities of a human, but lacks common sense. As a result, it asks odd questions about human emotions, contemplates human motivations, and attempts to duplicate human mannerisms. Razah is a contradiction: more than human in some ways, and less than human in others. It needs an identity, a personality, and a purpose. Hopefully, it will find its purpose by working with a hero. Otherwise, it could degenerate into an abomination as monstrous and inhuman as its demonic brethren.”

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Razah

It seems that this is saying that Razah is physiologically identical to demons, but not called a demon purely because of his personality and attitude. So the definition of a demon would seem to be something created from the Mists, but also “evil”. It’s a bit of a nebulous definition, but on physiological terms, Razah is a demon, and so too are the sylvari (if the theory holds).

And yeah, as I said above, the similarities are definitely there. Razah clearly had a “suitable human template”, and in the case of the sylvari, the “suitable human template” is whatever inspired the Pale Tree (which we’re saying here is an agent of the Mists) to interpret and create the sylvari in the image of humans (I still wanna say the corpses of Ronan’s family, but Malyck’s sylvari would suggest otherwise). Razah’s identity, personality, and purpose were given to him by Abaddon, but they were taken away with the Ascension of Kormir, leaving him without any of those things. The identity and personality of the sylvari is guided by the Ventari Tablet, and the purpose, well…that’s the question on everyone’s lips at the moment (collectively, at least – individual sylvari are given purpose by their Wyld Hunts or Dark Hunts, depending on affiliation). Malyck’s sylvari, on the other hand, seem to have the same template as those of the Pale Tree, and an identity and personality much closer to human (like Razah, actually).

Another way to look at it: Razah’s name comes from the Latin tabula rasa (meaning “blank slate”), as does, apparently, his personality. The sylvari have a very literal slate, and it is not blank. Malyck’s sylvari, on the other hand, have nothing like that as far as we know, which is why the Knight of Embers believed that they would fall to Nightmare much more easily. They are, like Razah, a blank slate.

Don’t rely to much on this analogy, by the way – it does not account for the major difference between the sylvari and Razah, namely their continued connection to the Mists. Mind you, Razah is described as sharing “a connection with all things spiritual”, which is why be default he is a powerful Ritualist.

An an amusing aside, duplicate versions of Razah in the player’s party will be named “Mysterious Entity”, although I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts/theories on the role of the Zodiac in Guild Wars lore? I assumed it had been forgotten about in Guild Wars 2, but the Zodiac weapons were added with the Clockwork Chaos release (no obvious connection to the lore) and the Zodiac armour was added with the Escape from Lion’s Arch release. Again, no connection to the lore of that release but then we don’t have many precedents – some of the individual armour sets released so far have belonged to B-iconics, others have never been seen before and have no connection to lore, but the only real set of gem store armours released so far are the Aetherblades, who were of course season 1 baddies. Makes me wonder whether the “Zodiacs” will have a similar role as a new faction in season 2, although this is of course all baseless speculation. Point being, those armours look a little too distinctive to not have some backstory (personally, they remind me of the armour worn by the juvenile GL in Arah).

We’ve never seen anything quite like the Zodiac armour before (to my knowledge), but the Zodiac weapons are familiar – they’re from Cantha, and they dropped in Urgoz’s Warren and the Deep. Again, we don’t know if there’s a lore connection here, it’s just that these were rare skins and these were the toughest areas in the game, so maybe they dropped there just so as not to be easily accessible. If there is a lore connection, the thing we should bear in mind is what connects these two areas, namely that they are the hearts of their respective regions, the Echovald Forest and the Jade Sea, and the areas hit hardest by the Jade Wind.

The other place that the Canthan zodiac appears, of course, is the Lunar Festival. It seems to match up quite closely with the Chinese zodiac. I didn’t have a huge amount of time to look, but the most lore I could find on the Lunar Festival was

I’m glad you asked! The festival has taken place for years, but not many know of its true heritage. Long ago, the emperor came to understand that each passing year exhibited characteristics normally associated with particular animals. In order to honor those animals and their influence over our lives, the emperor decreed that each year must be named for its patron animal. The emperor also noticed that the progression of years eventually repeated, so that is why you will hear people of different ages claim to be born in the same year. I will not bore you with the specifics of each individual year’s animals. There are most likely others here who can shed some light on that subject should you be interested.

So, I ask again, what is the deal with the Zodiac in Guild Wars 2?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

People say they have a natural role, but almost all ties to nature and natural roles come from NPC speculation, the Tyrian’s point of view, and them simply not understanding the true nature (for lack of a better word) of the Elder Dragons.

In fact, by upholding the stance that they are a natural force here, you are arguing against your own “survivors of an ancient race” theory from earlier.

As we learn from Edge of Destiny, Jormag and Kralkatorrik are both very much malignant – we see into their very thoughts. So they aren’t the impassive forces the Zephyrites and others take them to be, as those third person perspectives are overruled by the first person thoughts.

They can be malign and still natural. In the framework above, they are a race that consumed themselves in greed for power, and for all we know possessing that level of power is corruptive anyway. We know they aren’t impassive – they’re frequently described as greedy, for example. We know what motivates them, it’s just that they’re so powerful and so single-minded in their pursuit of their goals that they appear to be impassive forces of nature. They aren’t forces of nature, but they are natural (or so the theory goes, anyway).

Actually, I think most mentions of the Dragons being natural aren’t in-game, like you say, but interviews and articles. I’m not going to look now, but one I can think of off the top of my head is this one, where Angel speaks of the “natural role” of the Dragons, and “[the citizens of Tyria are] as much a natural part of the world as are the dragons”.

Tamias.7059:

Ree also says that the art in the cinematics is how the players perceives Zhaitan would look like, before actually seeing it. How something was during development isn’t so important as the final result – which is what we see in-game. We sadly do not know what Zhaitan looked like before being weakened, sans from the Sea of Sorrows very generic description of “Dark, tattered wings, as if something long dead was rising from the grave.” (page 65) which doesn’t give much (though does give the mental image Zhaitan may have been undead himself like many presume just from him controlling undead). We don’t really see much of Primordus – just a head and neck, leaving the rest of the body to look like whatever ArenaNet wants it to look like.

But even so, imps are fairly draconic looking, wouldn’t you say?

Yeah, absolutely. And like the Dragons, they seem to “pick” an element, or a kind of magic, which this theory doesn’t account for. But there’s nothing actually connecting imps and Dragons, and it goes against all the things we think we know about the Dragons being natural as opposed to otherworldly (as above).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Though I wouldn’t say sylvari are demons even if that theory rings true – because their bodies are not born from the Mists, but the Pale Tree. They’re much more akin to the kodan Voices, and less so to the norn Havrouns, whom have mental ties to the Mists.

If you believe that the Dream is a (meta)physical location, as you said in this thread, then the sylvari physically occupy both Tyria and the Dream during development. They grow inside pods on the Tree, but they also physically exist inside the Dream, which, according to that theory, is inside the Mists. So if the Dream is in the Mists, then the sylvari do, in a sense, come from the Mists, since the Dream is where they mentally and emotionally develop. It’s just that their physical form is created in Tyria. The main difference between sylvari and demons, then, would be that the sylvari maintain a connection with the Mists (albeit a weaker one) after they come into the world.

The Guild Wars Nightfall manuscripts define ‘demon’ thus:

Outside the world we know, other dimensions exist, realms beyond what we can see and experience. Civilized humans know that when they die, their souls pass on into the Mists, the realm of the afterlife. Some spirits linger in this world, or find ways to walk back into the realm of flesh…yet there are other creatures who watch them and wait, drawn to the energy of countless souls.
Sometimes souls are not enough. In dimensions alien to the physical world, sentient entities scheme of ways to enter the realm of flesh, dreaming of the havoc they can wreak. Just as ghosts can defy death by returning to the land of the living, demons find ways into our world, where they feast on suffering, despair, and the vital energy of intelligent creatures.
Demons are more than creatures of the Mists—they are made from the Mists themselves, bits of etheric matter that have gained malignant sentience and power. Whether they appear as monstrous humanoids, bestial abominations, or radically inhuman horrors, they share many of the same aspirations: the strong consume or dominate the weak, reveling in their feasts and victimization. As they are not native to the real world, demons hold an abiding hatred of its denizens. They are also ruthlessly intelligent, more than willing to enter into arrangements that allow them to routinely prey on humans and other foolish living creatures.

I’m not sure Elder Dragons fit this. Everything we know about the Dragons says that they are a natural force within Tyria, just as much a part of the world as the grawl, or the dwarves. They have a role within Tyria’s ecosystem, and some kodan believe they are a force for balance. I mean, everything comes from the Mists if you follow it back far enough, but Dragons in particular seem to each embody a different aspect of nature, rather than standing opposed to it.

Imps gaining size and power with magic absorption isn’t evidence enough for the Dragons being demons, imo—natural-born creatures, like Ploink’s raptor are subject to exactly the same phenomenon. Zhaitan’s appearance was far more draconic, for most of development, and was likely changed to make it appear more distinctive than a generic fantasy dragon (Primordus, who we have also seen in the flesh, looks a lot more like a traditional dragon). Ree kinds of picks up on this in this interview and suggests that one of the reasons for Zhaitan’s appearance is due to the long campaign of weakening by the Pact before we encounter it.

Although this does remind me of something else. drax’s theory that the Dream is a part of the Mists would mean that the sylvari are, in a sense, demons, although not necessarily malign ones. We know that with a suitable template, demons can exist without necessarily being evil. In fact, much of the description of Razah is also reminiscent of the sylvari – think of all the talk of human templates, and needing a purpose.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t think there’s some deeper meaning to Thruln the Lost blaming the gods – it seems like it is all just him trying to pass the buck of the jotun’s fall away from the jotun themselves.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Having thought about it, I think the purpose of Thruln (narratively) isn’t particularly to hint at some as-of-yet unrevealed lore (although there may be nuggets of it in there, which when devoid of context are unidentifiable), but to demonstrate how the different races have such wildly varying interpretations of the same event in history, and to prime the player for revisions of the human perspective of history that we are used to.

I do think this was quite poorly communicated, though. At launch, I , for one read Thruln’s dialogue and shocked that they had such important lore mentioned by one NPC in a city, and never mentioned by anyone else again. It makes a lot more sense if you think of Thruln’s purpose not as revelatory but emblematic of the multiple possible interpretations of history.

I wasn’t sure where to put this, since there are already several threads covering similar ground. But I think this idea is more to do with the many-dragon theory with how dragons consume magic anyway, but I could be wrong. Anyway, what I am about to posit is a theory on the origin of the Elder Dragons. Pretty big deal.

We know that the more magic imbued in a dragon minion by its master, the more power and self-determination it has. The most powerful (and usually, biggest) minions tend to be the ones with the most magic. Something we’ve missed, I think, is that of course this applies to non-dragon minions as well! The question of what happens when we kill an Elder Dragon got me thinking: what will happen to Zhaitan’s corpse? If an Elder Dragon dies, then the amount of magic that dragon has consumed is effectively “returned” to the world, free to be captured in magical items, like the Aspects, to radiate from the dragon’s corpse, or to be…wait for it, consumed by other Elder Dragons. Then, in order to reduce the world to a low level of magic once again, as is the Dragons’ purpose, each Dragon would need to consume more magic than before, as there is more “free” magic in the world (another way you could view would be to say that you have one less dragon, to consume the same amount of magic). But then, since we know that the amount of power one has is proportional to the amount of magic imbued in oneself, this would mean that the remaining Elder Dragons would have the potential to become more powerful than before! So by killing Zhaitan, we haven’t really decreased the amount of power that we need to overcome, only concentrated it into fewer places!

This works on a narrative level as well; the question since the end of the personal story has been how will the story maintain any sort of tension going forward, now that the races are unified and we have a Pact capable of killing Elder Dragons (and apparently without too much difficulty, although that might just be because there wasn’t much tension in the personal story to begin with)? I think most assumed that with the awakening of Mordremoth, the sylvari would turn out to be dragon minions and the unity of the races would fall apart (although given the recent souring of public opinion in Lion’s Arch against the sylvari, it wouldn’t surprise me if something like this could still happen), but now a more obvious answer appears: each Dragon is more dangerous than the last.

So where is the promised theory on the origin of the Elder Dragons? Well, what follows is speculation that, although it has nothing to disprove it, also has nothing solid to support it. All it has going for it is that it “fits”, and I believe it is the simplest explanation given the evidence we currently have. It comes from taking what was said above, about the remaining Elder Dragons becoming more powerful each time one of its brethren dies, and extrapolates backward, operating under the assumption of the many-dragon theory (that there are, or were, more dragons than jut the six we know of).

The theory would be this: long ago, when the world was young, there was a race of dragons that were spread across the world. Their memory can be seen in the architecture and culture of the Canthan Empire even to this day. Perhaps they were sentient, perhaps they were only sapient. At some point, they evolved, were given, or otherwise developed the ability to consume magic, which would increase the power of the individual who did so. It’d be as if humans, who are born with a variable inherent aptitude for magic, suddenly became able to simply take magic from others and become more powerful.

Survival of the fittest kicked in, and before long, the only dragons that were left were ones that could consume magic. The individuals of that race, greedy for more power, turned on one another, destroying each other and becoming each powerful with each death. They developed techniques for dominating and corrupting one another, enslaving weaker dragons to their service. Glint, Tequatl, and the Claws of Jormag are all descendants of these dragon champions, if not those dragons themselves.

The so-called “Elder Dragons” consumed all the magic of the world, in cycles of awakening and destruction. By 10,000 BE, they had reached an impasse – only six remained, each too powerful and different to be killed by any other. They converged on the continent of Tyria, circling one another’s domains. And the rest, as they say…

Horst Hortensie.5420:

Malyck is slightly different. The pods are growing in the roots, which is good indication that his tree is already dead or had a huge impact. Caithe mentions that he shouldn’t be so close to the grove. I tried to follow the stream to see where it rises and it looks like it comes from the top of Skrittsburgh and it’s the highest area around. If there is/was a sylvari tree then we should know about it. A huge explosion could have thrown the pod across the map from next possible location, which is Thaumanova.

Malycks appearance is slightly different, but still human shaped. We’ve never seen a female sylvari from his tree and we’ve never seen a nonhazardous sylvari from this tree. The only thing we learn from him is, that sylvari don’t need Ventari’s tablet.

How do we know that the pods in Malyck’s Tree are growing in the roots, again?

THE AGE OF GIANTS

Thruln the Lost: “The Age of Giants was a time when all the world’s giants ruled Tyria. Your people, my people, we had magic like you will never know. Wherever we walked, the ground shook.”
Player: “My norn ancestors too?”
Thruln the Lost: “The other races looked up to the norn and the jotun. We were superior to all other races, and we were gaining on the gods.”
Player: “What happened?”
Thruln the Lost: “The Age of Giants ended when magic was stolen from us. You norn turned to your Spirits of the Wild to redeem your strength and self-respect. We jotun have had no one and nothing to pull us from the quicksand.”

Thruln the Lost attributes the end of the Age of Giants to the gods taking magic from the jotun, which may or may not be true in general but for the specific case of the jotun, we have first-hand evidence that the main conflict was over blood. Elder Thruln (a different character, the ghost of an ancient giant-king) tells the player that the jotun civil war arose out of power, arrogance, and jealousy. He also states that “Our blood is the blood of the mountains”, and “In it, there is power”. I feel like there is some hidden meaning in this statement, perhaps tying into what I said above about magical aptitude being hereditary?

In not this dialogue, but the one above, Thruln says that that giants like the jotun and norn grew powerful. This suggests that there are other giant races that may have reigned in the Age of Giants. This is exciting to me, and if this thread gets completely derailed into research and discussion on the other giant races, I’d be fine with that. The other “giant” races are, as far as I can tell,

• True Giants, now extinct. It’s unknown if they have any relationship with the other giant races.
• Giants, of course. The age of this race is not exactly known, but if they’re related to the other races, it’s going to be very old. And the fact that at least some of the giants in Guild Wars (such as the Bull Trainer Giants) are actually probably what we’d now call ogres, suggests that they are indeed related, in some way.
• Ogres, a race old enough to call even the norn, who were around for the Age of Giants, a young race (from dialogue with Warmaster Forgal Kernsson, if the player is Vigil and chooses to help the ogres of Agrak Kraal). In Guild Wars, ettins, yeti, and jotun were all considered “ogres”, and could pass disease to one another.
• Kodan, who believe themselves to be the oldest sentient race. The kodan began their spread across the world after a “great storm”. Prior to this, they had been bounded by the seas, but the great storm, which did not end though “month after month and season after season passed”, created the icebergs which the kodan now use for their Sanctuaries. I believe that this great storm was in fact the influence of the Elder Dragon Jormag in its previous rise, which would make the kodan older than that. The kodan also believe that the norn are descended from a lost kodan tribe who spiritually lost their way during the great storm, so this would also help us date the norn.
• Ettins, trolls, and yeti. Not much is known about them, and if any more detailed lore on these three races exists, then it has yet to be compiled into one place.

The only races that we know reigned during the Age of Giants are the jotun and norn, but we also know that they are not the only two. According to this blog post, “we wanted to make the ogres an old race and follow that with the jotun, since the two species are interlinked”. Interlinked how? Culturally, historically, or physiologically? My bet is all three – the ogres, too, probably reigned during the Age of Giants. The kodan have consistently maintained a culture since the great storm, so they are a strong candidate. As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine. A race being primitive doesn’t necessarily exclude it – just look at the jotun. For all we know, all of them could have once been counted among the giant-kings.

THE DRAGONS

Thruln the Lost: “Stories of the ancient time of dragons are rare, mostly forgotten. When I was young, an old jotun came to our fire, and told us about a time before the dragons slept.”
Player: “What was is like?”
Thruln the Lost: “Magic was wild. The dragons were merciless conquerers. They had the entire world under their talons.”
Player: “What happened?”
Thruln the Lost: “They went to sleep, and the surviving races rebuilt. My jotun ancestors formed kingdoms. Giants, like the jotun and the norn, grew powerful. The chaos was tamed—until
now.”

Nothing much new here. Thruln saying that “magic was wild” in the past probably refers to the fact that before the Bloodstone wkittentered, magic was much more powerful. It seems to suggest, as speculated above, that the jotun giant-kingdoms predate the first unsealing of the Bloodstone.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE HUMANS

Thruln the Lost: “The humans came in boats from across the great water. At first, they kept to the shores, but then they spread across the land and into our mountains.”
Player: “What then?”
Thruln the Lost: “In the beginning, humans lived like grawl. The gods had not yet noticed them. Their magic was primitive: fire, earth, air and water. My jotun ancestors helped them survive.”
Player: “What happened next?”
Thruln the Lost: “Humans collected on the high plains. Tribes became settlements. Settlements became a kingdom. And that was when the gods noticed them and betrayed the jotun.”

The humans were brought to Tyria from…somewhere across the Mists, and did not come with much magic of their own. The first known humans appeared in Cantha in 786 BE, and in Tyria and Elona around 200 BE. So Thruln saying they came from across “the great water” (presumably the Unending Ocean) doesn’t contradict any known lore, and actually gives us a clue as to what kind of point in history he is talking about here.

But Thruln must have his chronology a little confused somewhere. It would seem to suggest that the jotun had magic at a time that the humans did not, when as far as we know the gods unsealed the Bloodstone for everyone at the same time. From what Thruln says further down, the Age of Giants could well predate the gods unsealing the Bloodstone (which then would have acted to only further the greatness of the jotun and norn, rather than beginning it), so it’s possible that the jotun were helping the humans survive while also not having magic, but the fact that he says that the gods noticed the humans and betrayed the jotun after this, without any mention of the races being given magic, suggests that they did in fact have magic.

This, really, is part of a bigger discussion about several long-standing apparent inconsistencies in the history of magic. When the gods first gave magic to the races of Tyria, did they give it to everyone? If they didn’t give it to the humans, or the humans arrived after the first round of magic-giving and therefore didn’t get any until the second round, this would help to explain Thruln’s dialogue, but then all the human records seem to suggest that humans did get magic the first time round. This “first round”, according to humans, was in 1 BE, but Angel said that Doric’s plea to the gods came only after hundreds of years of wars. And as Thruln points out, the grawl seem to this day to have access only to very primitive magic, and the charr didn’t receive magic strong enough to rival the humans until 870 AE, according to the Ecology of the Charr. It could just be a consequence of biology – magical aptitude is in part, at least, inherent to an individual, so it makes sense that it’d be inherent to a race as well. Maybe when the Bloodstone was unsealed, magic reached different races at different rates, based on their proximity to the ley lines. More research needs to be done in this area, but until we know more we should regard Thruln’s explanation in this area with some suspicion, since there are far more solid sources that contradict him on this.