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#Gw2 Lore
ratasum · 4 months
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Let's Talk About Thaumanova!
This is undoubtedly going to get long, as I want to dig into a few things, including the potential name of the city that was destroyed in the meltdown, how much was/is known about the reactor, and theories/wild mass guessing. So it goes under a cut.
So for reference if you somehow don't know, most people know Thaumanova as one of two things:
A named area within Metrica Province where the Fire Elemental world boss spawns. There's a great deal of magical temporal displacement that takes place in this location, and NPCs can be found that refer to the disaster.
The fractal that encompasses the timeframe roughly one year before the beginning of the Personal Story that shows the events of the reactor meltdown that destroyed the city far above it.
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According to in game dialogue from a researcher you can talk to at the entrance to the named area, the location was formerly an asuran city. Research the Inquest was conducting far below the city caused a chain reaction/meltdown that caused the reactor to go critical and level the area, leaving the city a ruin.
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The implication provided here is that the location we're in is a city high above where the Thaumanova Reactor actually was located, where the Inquest was doing its research with Scarlet. He provides no details of what transpired here, nor does he name the reactor or the city itself.
It's implied that basically an entire city was wiped off the map, but NOT that the city itself was Inquest. The city was a simple asuran city cube, and the Inquest research was apparently secret... until the year before the PS.
On the other hand, nearby, you can visit a camp with survivors. It can be hard to get the applicable dialogue here, as there is a repeating event chain where Inquest from the Inner Complex will attempt to or have succeeded in kidnapping survivors from the city/reactor meltdown.
Gliga is a peacemaker you can speak with at the encampment.
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She has some interesting dialogue regarding the reactor that contradicts (somewhat) what the researcher above spoke in regards to.
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Gliga seems to indicate some knowledge of the reactor, but while she mentions the reactor itself, no name for the city itself is given. I have theories on this! But we'll come back to that in a moment.
Next up is Refugee Ejint. He was in the city when the reactor melted down and destroyed it. He's one of the lucky survivors, and gives us some clues on what happened to people in the city who weren't lucky enough to make it out.
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Yikes!
This does go along with the thought, however, that a number of people did die- probably a significant number. If they didn't die, they were transmuted into Something Else. I'd also like to theorize that being displaced from reality or tossed into the mists is also a possibility, considering you can see animals being popped in and out of existence in the reactor (and in Brisban and the Iron Marches!).
There aren't any other refugees or survivors we can speak to here, but this is a good start. (Note: if you try to speak to other refugees, they'll cough, start crying, moan, or mutter things like "oh no no no.")
I won't get into the reactor itself too much, as it doesn't give us much more detail into the city itself, and we mostly know what transpired there.
(It is interesting to note that Dessa clearly knew two researchers, but didn't quite recognize them, stating they changed... but Dessa's fractal echo appears to be from about 20 years prior, so my general theory for that is one: her friends aged 20 years, and two: they're Inquest where they may not have been before. She also has dialogue from LWS1's initial drop that mentions knowing about the Thaumanova lab itself! Which is interesting! But we don't really get anymore detail on that.)
That being said... on to the Brisban Wildlands!
The reactor's explosion had far reaching effects, and the nearest location we can see that is in the Brisban Wildlands. The most notable of which is the Toxal Bog. Here, you can see the remnants of a ton of magical residue, and creatures that pop in and out of existence. My guess is the reactor's meltdown affected this area significantly.
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Also in Brisban is the Thaumacore Inquiry Center POI and hero point. It appears the core of the reactor was eventually removed by the Inquest, though there's no indication as to when. It's possible this may also be what affected the Toxal Bog, but there's no way to know for certain.
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I sometimes wonder if the orb you see at the end of the Thaumanova fractal isn't the power source seen here, but that's neither here nor there.
The final spot (that I'm immediately aware of) on our Thaumanova Tour is the Iron Marches! This is an interesting one, since we learn that the reactor's explosion didn't just affect the city and the immediate area... it also affected the location the crystals used in the Inquest facility were mined in: the Chaos Crystal Cavern Jumping Puzzle.
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And the effects of the chaos rifts are varied indeed.
So with all this information in hand, what can we conclude?
It's time for theories!
In general, we know painfully little. We know there was a reactor called the Thaumanova Reactor, and there was (at one time) a city above it. We know there was a loss of life, be it from people dying, being transfigured, or a variety of other things that may have affected them (displaced, yeeted out of existence, etc).
We also know that the reactor meltdown happened in a lab deep below the city, not in the city itself.
My general theory is that the reactor was in the city, or at least underneath it, and WAS a known item. I do think the Thaumanova Reactor was what powered the city cube that was there at one time. I don't think, however, that they shared a name. Large asuran settlements have very standard naming principles, as seen with the known examples below:
Quora Sum
Rata Pten
Rata Novus
Rata Arcanum
Rata Sum
Rata Primus
I do think it may have been something like Rata Thauma or Rata Nova (though Rata Nova is a stretch... it's very close to Rata Novus, which may a) have the implication of bad luck and b) call to mind Zinn, who was pretty unpopular, to say the least).
My guess in this regard, since no one was aware the lab was under the city, was that the laboratory didn't even have a name, or at the very least if it was named for the reactor, it was sold to the people in the city as not actually being down below so as to allay any fears the citizenry may have about having a giant Inquest laboratory right under their feet.
(I am aware that Dessa mentions the Thauma lab, and that she was aware it was "a nasty place to work," but it's the only line that exists and iirc it was ONLY in the og LWS1 drop, so it's equally possible she didn't know exactly what it was or what research was taking place there. I could be wrong, though, and if anyone has screens of that dialogue, please feel free to add them on! That said, we do know from the researcher the lab was not known about prior to the reactor meltdown. That fact is, at least, solid.)
So what happened to the city cube?
My personal theory is that the city cube is the Uncategorized Fractal. Having Dessa's former partner (supposedly) there doesn't disprove this, either: we know Dessa in the fractal echo is from roughly 20 years prior. Her being so hesitant about the empty city doesn't necessarily mean that she was aware of the reactor meltdown. If sh e and her partner had a falling out, or if she's seen this loop enough to know what's at the end...
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It could elicit the same response. And we know things can be ripped OUT of the mists, so why not placed into the mists as well? The Raving Asura's dialogue also pairs neatly with some ambient dialogue from a survivor in the Survivors Encampment.
(My Gyazo busted and I didn't catch the dialogue in a screenshot, but you can read it here at this link... it's the first piece under At the Survivor Encampment, and there's other interesting dialogue below!)
Obviously Your Mileage May Vary, but it's REALLY fu n to speculate and think about this place. It's a great place to look to for information if you want a LOT of trauma for your asura's backstory, be it by being a survivor, losing family while they were away, being an Inquest researcher who escaped, or maybe even by being distorted by the shifts in reality when the reactor melted down.
I jokingly say the Thaumanova city cube is my Roman Empire, and genuinely, I talk about it because people who aren't playing asura may not even realize it was there.
But I hope this provides some neat information on a little known/talked about piece of asura lore!
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system-architect · 1 year
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i took some of my friends/guildies on a run through 'story mode' (listening to all the dialogue) of shattered observatory recently and some of them learned new stuff despite running fractals often, which made me realize a bit there's actually a decent amount of fractals lore that people might not know or have picked up on, especially if you ran through the fractals pretty fast?? imo it's genuinely one of the most fascinating and well-written areas of the game
so, here, some of my favorite fractal/dessa/arkk lore tidbits (and why i Really Love Fractals):
1. arkk and potentially dessa are implied to be ex-inquest-- in the nightmare fractals, arkk mistakes the players for inquest debt collectors, and in his chaos fractal journal entries mentions his 'witless subordinates', so the implication feels to be that his mists research was inquest funded before he ghosted them. in thaumanova, dessa mentions two of the inquest npcs as having been krewemates of hers-- in ls1 she refers to them as being from her 'old krewe', and still describes them as friends (she also refers to them as 'good technicians', like yknow, the inquest rank). also, it may be for aesthetics, but tiles with the inquest logo are used throughout fractals (and in mistlock sanctuary)
2. simon, the cat obtainable from fractals, is implied to have been arkk's cat as per the headstone next to it (does this make arkk's cat golems make sense? maybe! they're also a cheeky reference to the other cat golems throughout fractals)
3. there was a little incident back in ls1 that revealed the fractals lobby is, itself, a fractal, and it and all the creatures in it loop continuously just like the regular fractals. shattered observatory is also vaguely foreshadowed in it, in a sad way :")
3a. similarly, by the way, the mistlock sanctuary is a fractal too-- ever talked to the npcs in there? go speak to ilia-- and the bartender
4. dessa hates the consortium, supposedly 'lost' her boyfriend (potentially arkk's father?) to them, and is not aware that the consortium are the ones who started promoting the fractals to tyria as an 'attraction'
5. dessa is, in some way, connected to the asura boss at the end of uncategorized fractal-- a small fact we only know from the dreamer collection, combined with dessa freaking out and having to leave when the fractal begins. we don't know their relation
6. dessa seems somewhat aware that she is non-existent/a mists magic construct bound to the timeloops. in a now-lost lore interview from wartower, she is described as being afraid to leave mistlock observatory in case she can't return to it. at the end of shattered observatory, she is much quicker to have the revelation than arkk is-- to the point where you could read it as her having known the whole time
7. and now, my favorite, which is more of a headcanon with a solid lore basis that i tend to go full pepe silvia about-- there's two types of fractal we see: ones that are sort of 'possible' or somewhat alien alternate realities, and then ones that are repeating loops of events that actually happened.
chaos, nightmare, and shattered observatory are all evidently loops of events that actually happened. arkk very much does smash into the fractals, you very much do stop him, dessa and arkk very much do effectively sacrifice themselves to stop the fractals from becoming destroyed, and then the loop repeats-- as they explicitly state it will
here's the thing... during the dialogue at the end of shattered, dessa states that arkk did successfully account for all variables except for the reality that they themselves aren't sentient and are just echoes bound to the fractal loop. thus that arkk's DDR would have successfully worked to extract them from the fractals if they were real, corporeal entities.
but since the shattered observatory is an echo of an event that happened, then just like all the other 'echo' fractals, then there needed to have been actual people acting upon the mists to create the event that's echoed in the first place. that is, it didn't just pop into existence of its' own accord. and while we encounter the fractal looped versions of arkk and dessa, they definitely were real people outside in tyria at some point in time
so... in the original version of the fractal... what actually happened? did a real, corporeal arkk meet a real, corporeal dessa? if so, did his DDR work? did they actually escape the mists, and then the loop in the fractal only ended up like it did because the copies couldn't follow in the originals' footsteps? or was arkk real, only to find that dessa wasn't? if the arkk and dessa we meet are only impressions or echoes of the real things, then where on tyria are the real arkk and dessa?
we don't know!! we simply don't know! we also know very little about the consortium, their connections to the inquest, or the uncategorized fractal! there is SO MUCH lore they could expand upon in future fractals and i really really hope they do ;_;
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i-mybrunettelady · 3 months
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full speed ahead: an ascalon lore post from moi! after a century and a half!
it's a little post, really, that's like. my personal hc about the position and role of women in ascalonian society pre and after searing, ft my two ascalonian girls, sofronija (sofka in further text) and nyra! i will also speak in broader terms here, so men and women = masculine and feminine roles, but you absolutely can add nonbinary people in this spectrum as well. it's just easier for me to discuss in more generalised terms now!
i don't think women were ever encouraged to just be housewives even in pre-searing ascalon; we see this in game, women serve as much of a public role as men do, hold public functions, are respected and valued and honored, but what i wanna focus here is the role of a warrior. see, how i see it, pre-searing women were allowed and encouraged to train and wield magic and know how to fight and be adventurers, but mostly in the purpose of self-defense? men went to war, that was a masculine thing; sometimes women did as well, and that was a-ok, but they mostly stayed behind to protect their villages and cities.
sofka was born in what we'd call upper middle class - or the late medieval equivalent - and married into a family of the same class. her husband was a merchant; she herself is an up and coming elementalist and necromancer when prophecies start, and she was expected to join her husband in his trading affairs, even travel. granted, she is a widow when prophecies start, but the point still stands.
she has no real aspirations for a soldier's life. she only joins the ascalon vanguard on devona's insistence, and sofka has a big fat crush on her, so she joins the vanguard to impress her crush. the searing brings her at the forefront because of the skill she gained in the vanguard, not because she wants to. she would've been fine living a life where she wasn't expected to be a soldier, but life had different plans for her.
fast forward to current day and the role of a warrior-woman is a little different. for one, it's not as rare - in the centuries after the searing, and especially in ebonhawke, they needed every capable person they could find. this developed into an expectation of sorts that men and women were to be combatants on the field, and this goes twice for the nobility.
ascalon's nobility (the remaining ones, that is) is a warrior nobility; their pride is in their ability to contribute to battles as soldiers and tacticians. they guide themselves by something akin to the code of chivalry. there are exceptions, of course. nyra's own mother, antonia, has always felt left out of that whole warrior-woman narrative because she isn't up for it, so moving to kryta and becoming a socialite was much more up her alley than the role she was expected to have in ebonhawke.
nyra grew up with these ideas of what a woman should be. in a way, she is the perfect embodiment of a current ascalonian view of women. she would've thrived in ebonhawke, not only as a member of the ainsaf family (aka a noble family with royal blood) but also in the way she chooses to live her life. her "conflict" is the fact that she is krytan-ascalonian, that she is in the middle of both cultures, and krytan view of what a woman should be is more akin to the one ascalon held pre-searing than the current ones.
her being diaspora is also super important here because in canon, ascalonian diaspora/minority communities are so keen on preserving their heritage. so there was twice as much pressure to maintain this image and role, which she happily does! but then it clashes with the things her other culture is telling her.
her choice to lean into the ascalonian side of things is not more or less valid than her mother's choice to lean into the more krytan side of things. it's just a choice. and i find all of this so very interesting...
anet what did you put in your humans to make them so fucking cool
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mistfallengw2 · 3 hours
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Speaking of WvW and Mist War, how do y'all consider deaths in that game mode? Since the whole area goes through periodic resets due to being in a fractal-like state, is death something permanent or temporary ?
If death is permanent, how is the army of Mist Warriors full enough to allow zerg fight after zerg fight? Are those who die just injured/captured? If so, why leave them alive if the others are canonly seen as pure evil enemies?
If death is temporary, what happens to those who die? Does dying leave physical and mental damage of sorts? Why do so many never come back again? Can it be made permanent in some way? Can one remain stuck there like one can remain stuck in the fractals?
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saberwitch · 3 months
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just wanted to remind everyone that the Holy Dwayna Academy for Wayward & Incorrigible Girls is a canon thing
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sugarwraith · 1 year
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youtube
Guess who was sponsored by @guildwars2 to check out some of the Kryptis coming with Secrets of the Obscure!
I was able to make a lil mini lore video on them which you can see here.
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mistswalker · 2 years
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Some thoughts on the Void and the Mists
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End of Dragons has been on my mind a lot. I found the Void fundamentally and thematically intriguing beyond its clear reception of the real-world emotions contemporary with the EoD release.
It raised many questions— About the difference between the Void and Mists. The differences and reasons for the differences between the apocalypses of Kralkatorrik's rampage and Soo-Won's void corruption. About the nature of the Void and its role in the Eternal Alchemy.
What I hadn't expected was the way those questions were answered, or the greater implications they seem to have. I felt like many things about the larger metaphysical lore clicked into place with this new understanding— The deeper nature of the Mists. The "madness" of the Elder Dragons. The role of the Forgotten, and the lasting and unintended impacts of the Six on Tyria. While I'm sure I'm extrapolating and reading a bit much into certain things, as I always have with this series, I'm definitely glad to have this understanding of these concepts for moving forward with my own fanworks, and I haven't quite been able to shake the high of cracking this metaphorical Da Vinci code.
Now, this all gets a big disclaimer that some of this includes extrapolations and headcanons I've previously built for my stories, but that aside, let me just rehash some of the basics of the Mists. As we know, the Mists are potential incarnate. The Mists, "the All", and the "Void" are all facets of this same concept, and each of these facets are interconnected. Each culture in Tyria seems to interpret what it knows of the Mists in different ways. The way most of Tyria seems to best understand the Mists' nature of infinite potential is when it's represented as a physical space. Areas of manifested potential all chaotically swirling, building, deconstructing, and rebuilding. The God realms. The afterlife. The Fractals. The Mists War.
This facet of the concept is what's most observable. But that aspect of the Mists is only the answer to the question "where?" "The Void", on the other hand, is raw coalesced magic. The clay of reality. The raw potential that could be shaped into anything and that manifests reality as its observed to its inhabitants. In this sense, the Void could be considered the Mists' answer to "what?"
"The All", also known as the Eternal Alchemy, is what ties these two pieces together. It is the fractal-pattern of how that reality manifests. The "blueprint" for what the clay is built into. Each new reality's blueprint is slightly off from the last, creating the infinity of the butterfly effect, and the in-world nod to the multiverse of commander timelines. The Mists' answer to "how?"
I speculate that the overlap of The All is an important factor in the distinction between the two potential apocalypses of Kralkatorrik and Soo-Won.
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This is what the people of Tyria have decided is the most genuine representation of "the Eternal Alchemy" at work: Six magical aspects that balance and sustain a world. We see this with the elder dragons, obviously. But where's the other notable place in which six magical aspects tried to balance and sustain a world, only to strangely leave theirs and seemingly planehop to the setting of our story?
The Human Gods.
They aren't perfect matches for each of the Elder Dragons— but they didn't have to be. They were what was created with the clay of their universe, following the larger scale "pattern" in their own unique way. They also exhibit a parallel ascension to that of Aurene taking the mantle of Elder Dragon, and we witness this with the birth of the goddess Kormir from the spearmarshal Kormir.
Another noteworthy parallel between the Gods and the Dragons is something only observable over time in their lore and history— we notice the Gods beginning to go mad, and manifesting in darker and more twisted aspects of themselves as time goes on during their ultimately brief stint in Tyria.
We see it clearly with Abbadon. We see implications of it with Dhuum. And finally, we see further hints of it with Balthazar (including some very creepy deep-lore and environmental storytelling in his realm, but I'll get to that some other time...) But to get into the Gods and the God Realms further, I need to explain what leads me to believe that the Human gods are the reason for the distinction between the Kralk apocalypse (where all of the Mists began coming undone), and the Soo-Won apocalypse (where this facet of reality began dissolving into Void). And to do that I need to talk about inter-planar travel. So we know that many finite universes within the Mists share many aspects with each other, just altered in small ways that stack up over time. We also know that the people of the world experience the Mists to be a sort of afterlife in addition to being a source of all history and potential. We have also seen and visited different "domains" within the mists. The part of the Mists that is the physical living realm, influenced by these forces is the globe in the center. The gray and colored areas outside of it are pieces of reality concretely formed enough to influence that globe very strongly. Tyrians perceive those things as "real", and those include the "domains" in the Mists.
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Everything else out here? That's what Tyria thinks of as "the Mists" in a small-scale sense. The parts of reality that don't have strong shape. The place where potential fragments. This is where the Fractals are. This is where Rytlock was trapped. This is where Kralkatorrik rampaged.
When Kralkatorrik fell back out of the Mists on this rampage, he pulled parts of the God Realms with him. Aurene noted he was being drawn to familiar magics— Melandru's realm and that of Grenth were included alongside the Fissure of Woe this despite Kralkatorrik having only tasted the specific magic of one of those three gods. We could take that a number of ways, but, to me, that speaks to not only a continued parallel between the Gods and the Elder Dragons, but also as a hint to how the Six gods stepped over the border between their original shard of reality and ours.
The Six were magically fluent inherently. They were gods—the Elder Dragons of their homeworld. They used the aspects as a tether between their own domains and the matching magic here in Tyria. They were able to find stasis in the magic aspects themselves.
If we accept the Gods as parallel Elder Dragons, then we can further extrapolate that the Elder Dragons potentially have their own connected pseudo-realms within the less firm parts of reality. Personally, I've long believed this made a great deal of sense as to the nature of their hiveminds, and have talked about that in other non-tumblr babbles about the nature of the Dream and Nightmare to Sylvari.
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That aside, since the Elder Dragons were asleep and any "domain" aspect of the Mists connected to them was only utilized for their hiveminds, the Gods would be free to shape some of these mirrored domains to match their own preferences. This borrowing of the Elder Dragons place in our world, ultimately, is what I believe utterly destabilized things when Balthazar was killed.
It wasn't an immediate destruction because of the other Five's foresight. They'd had the good sense to drain most of his magic when they detained him, but they couldn't drain all of it without destroying his essence itself.
So despite their best efforts to mitigate the risk— taking their personal exodus of not just Tyria but the Tyrian Mists as a whole, and draining Balthazar of as much of his magic as they could safely take with them as only 5, upon Balthazar's death there was still excess otherworldly magic lingering in the Tyrian Mists. And the Mists had already become very volatile due to the destruction of two of their own six structural guardians. Magics were mixing in ways they hadn't since the formation of structure in the realm. Things were already heading toward Void and unmaking of this reality, but what tipped the scales into an unmaking of all reality was that lingering excess magic from another realm. One that's very nature tied two realms together.
Kralkatorrik, with Balthazar's ability to walk between planes, began rampaging in multiple facets of reality, ripping bigger and bigger holes and mixing the contents inside like containers of different liquid.
And because of the fractal-like way the Mists infinitely follow the same larger-scale patterns, this was happening not just in several planes, but several iterations of those connected planes. (which you can visualize with the different commander-timelines. Each different commander who reaches season 4? Is another "iteration" of that fractal.)
Aurene, when she ascends to Kralkatorrik's place as an Elder Dragon, spends a huge chunk of time repairing the Mists after this. And the most important part of that would have been isolating Balthazar's magic and putting it back in the realm it belongs in. Limiting any future fallout to their plane. Now that each plane has the same amount of clay it started with, things are more stable in that sense.
Glint gives Aurene advice on Ascension posthumously prior to this. That same Ascension that was tied to the Forgotten, and "True Sight", and the equivalent of the Canthan concept of "Weh no Su" ("Closer to the Stars") and described by humans as being a "state of communion with the Gods". Which leads me to the next piece of this larger puzzle: The Forgotten.
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We know the Forgotten appeared in Tyria during the last Dragon Cycle. We also know they reappeared and made their presence known in association with the human gods— but we also know that the Forgotten originate from the Mists. They are yet more planeswalkers.
I've mentioned before believing that the Forgotten worked with the human gods to minimize the fallout from their arrival in Tyria. We see Forgotten philosophies echoed in Glint, the Exalted, as well as in Ventari and his peaceful centaur clan. They were very dedicated to Balance. I hypothesize that they were some of the first planeswalkers. They likely learned about the impacts of mists-travel firsthand and resolved to dedicate their existence to preserving stability as a result. (Which may be why even they call themselves "the forgotten". They've existed for so long on the fringes of reality that they may not remember where they came from, only why they're still there. But I digress.)
Ascension and the Forgotten were something integral to fighting the Mursaat (yet again, even more planeswalkers in Tyria) because of how it granted the subject "True Sight" and the ability to see between the realms where the Mursaat liked to slip away and hide.
The Forgotten also had found a way to cleanse individuals from the elder dragon hiveminds as we see in Path 3 of the Arah dungeon, allowing them to preserve free will. I think these two concepts are related in a way.
if Ascension is what taught Aurene how to re-stabilize multiple planes of reality from such a catastrophic mixing of magic, and was also what turned her from a being of crystal into a being of prism? Something that filters light into its base components and sorts it all out? Ascension must be something gives one a sense of their place in the All, their role in the broader workings of the Mists, while helping them reshape themselves to fill that role.
(As a brief tangent, that may also play into Scarlet's fall in Omadd's machine— Omadd's machine was intended to "see and understand the Eternal Alchemy". An artificial ascension. And she certainly embraced her larger role.) Now back to Soo-Won, the origins of Tyria and the Elder Dragons, and the Void-based apocalypse...
Soo-Won talks about being the mother of the other elder dragons. The first one. How she eased her own pain of loneliness by creating children to share the magic with. We see a similar narrative in some senses with the human gods-- Dwayna is looked at as the "first" and the "leader". she's the literal mother of Grenth.
We also see Soo-Won hold off the madness of the Void the longest. Her elemental representation is water-- the foundation of life as we know it. I think that her account of history as being the mother of the other elder dragons and raising them as hatchlings is in some ways true and in some ways metaphorical, as it likely predates Tyria as a concrete reality.
It makes sense to me that Soo-Won was the first consciousness to manifest in the Void as reality began to shape itself. The first sense of will to help the blueprint unfold. the other elder dragons are, in that sense, her "children", but also nearly peers in terms of age in concrete reality. They were created by her will, her loneliness, but reality only solidified into what we know as "Tyria" when all of the aspects found a natural balance.
It makes sense that the Elder Dragons lived lives of isolation— if their distinction had created structure from chaos— something that clearly frightens even Soo-Won, the most familiar with it — of course the answer to that would be separation. Isolation. Loneliness even when no longer alone.
Of course this forced isolation would slowly erode loneliness and despair into selfishness and resentment in many of them. And so of course, then, their own madness and corruption stems from that internal agony. And what is it's drive? How does it take from the world? Consumption. Forced assimilation under their own domain.
"Become part of me. Not the void. Me."
What is the Forgotten's answer to this? The way to preserve balance? To replace the cycle of consumption with a cycle of distribution. willful sharing. Social sharing. A bond between dragons and mortals.
The answer to the fear of being alone isn't to force others into your realm. It's to learn to coexist with them. That's how you fight the instinctual call of the Void.
This is what finally made sense as the answer to Aurene's question. "Why do they all go mad?" The "madness" of the dragons is that— the instinctive call of the Void as they become overwhelmed by pain and suffering and can no longer stand their isolation. They consume and consume more and more to try to sate that emptiness. They grow imbalanced in their identities as they struggle to process all that they consume that doesn't fit.
They don't want to give it back. They don't want to be alone again. Eventually though, it seeps out of them and they awaken more pained and ravenous than before.
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ylkcheeeks · 8 months
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possible new rotation subject: Tyrian World Religions 201
I was reading the wiki for funsies (as one does) and noticed in the article on Lyssa a throwaway note that the norn consider her a “spirit of action” with a footnote to an archive of Guild Mag. Indeed, on page 14 a developer went into how the different races filter conceptions of their fellows’ gods/spirits/philosophy thru their own experiences, such as the asura seeing human gods as larger equations in the Eternal Alchemy and the norn see the human gods as spirits of action, with Balthazar being War and Kormir being Knowledge. They would be called such by norn—obviously this is lore that didn’t make it into the game because norn NPCs and PC dialogue options alike refer to Balthazar not (Spirit of) War.
Which already- war can be a domain or an action but knowledge is a domain. One would think the action would be learning or study or observation or something… tho I appreciate the alliteration. But it of course doesn’t go further into it so we don’t know how the other gods’ domains translate for the norn. They aren’t all as straightforward, often having dominion over multiple areas both due to the shifting over time as gods fell or ascended and the doylist need to have a particular god of whatever class you pick.
Balthazar, dominion over war, fire, and challenge. Spirit of War, and boy does he live up to it. *
Kormir, dominion over order, spirit and truth. Spirit of Knowledge. Interesting choice since humans tend to focus more on her aspect as Goddess of Truth. *
Dwayna, dominion over healing, air, and life. First of the gods to arrive on Tyria from the mists when they put humans there. Church of Dwayna worships as Goddess of Life. I perceive her as the head of the pantheon, with additional influence over medicine (human story) and motherhood (see below). Possibly Spirit of Healing? Or of Assistance, given the nature of prayers/flavor dialogue associated with her.
Grenth, dominion over death, ice, darkness (and being baby boy. In-universe mari llywd probably.) Associated with casting off of illusions, defeat of false gods, etc. Worshipped as God of Death. Obvious answer would be Spirit of Death but due to Dhuum and also I prefer more action, how about Spirit of Fallow or Spirit of Inevitability (per statue description)
Melandru, dominion over nature, earth, and growth. Considered the oldest & wisest, worshiped as Goddess of Nature.
- May have had an aspect named Mellaggan (bounty, wealth of the ocean) who appeared to the Quaggans but was killed by krait at some point in the distant past.
- obviously all the spirits are part of nature, so I suspect she’s the Spirit of Growth.
Lyssa, dominion over beauty, water, and illusion. Worshipped as Goddess of Beauty but her parables and associations with chaos seem to more emphasize illusions. Possibly Spirit of Inspiration given her favoring art and culture? Interested in the implications of Lys & Ilya + triple-faced sigil.
Abadon, dominion over deep water, knowledge, and magic. Titled God of Secrets. Lore snippet suggests he used to appear in the form of a handsome & calm man with wings as blue as the ocean, appearance changed over time thru torment into squidhead we know and love. Apparently made the Sirens Landing reliquaries, further cementing Secrets as his main thing so I feel safe saying he would be (have been) the Spirit of Secrecy.
Dhuum, dominion over death undeniable, voice in the void, etc. also has a helmet with fuckassbig horns, both more and less humanoid than Grenth. Spirit of Annihilation sounds good to me.
Menzies the Mad, Lord of Destruction. Yeah I know we aren’t sure he’s a god but I feel safe assuming he basically would be one if humans worshipped him. Allegedly is more associated with destructive/deceptive battle than valorous & honorable Balthazar, but given recent events… possibly the Spirit of Bloodthirst or Vengence?
The three queens! Lesser spirits of defense/wrestling/etc? No idea.
Anyhow. That’s some thoughts.
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alma-draws · 2 years
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I’m tossing out a lore and character development question for all of your undead characters! I’m talking your liches, your Risen, your Awakened - anyone unconventionally alive.
And the question is this: Forget about special powers. How has your character’s everyday life changed since becoming undead? Do they eat? Sleep? Do they require any ‘special’ measures to keep going? What concessions have they made to compensate for being undead? 
In short, tell me about day-to-day life! I want to hear about the ordinary struggles and successes of existing as undead.
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ratasum · 8 months
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I spent some time going around to the areas I know of on the map that reference Thaumanova, including the reactor itself (not the fractal but the location in Metrica).
If anyone has any examples I've missed, let me know!
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This is the dialogue from the researcher at the entrance to Thaumanova.
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The Thaumacore Inquiry Center and its Hero Point in the Brisban Wildlands, holding the core from the Thaumanova Reactor. This is near the toxal bog, which is relevant!
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Here's some Thaumanova fallout IN the Toxal Bog. I'm not sure if this is due to proximity to the Thaumacore Inquiry Center or if it was affected by the explosion itself.
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And the last one I'm aware of, the Chaos Crystal Cavern jumping puzzle in the Iron Marches. Seems they were using a lot of crystals from here, so I do wonder if places like this is where they get a lot of arcane crystals for golemancy from?
But anyway I'm still feral about Thaumanova.
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system-architect · 1 year
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wow this feels like a piece of lore that i should know already, but does anyone have at least a rough, canon-based estimate of what age asura enter or graduate college? everywhere im just seeing says "when they're old enough" and it seems to be younger than irl humans going to college, but we also know taimi was apparently pretty young to have been in college at around age... 12? when we met her in LS1
if anyone has a better number than that it would be appreciated lmao
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lilchiharu · 1 year
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am I the only one that listens to music while creating lore and new characters??
also, shout out to vivinos 👀
alien stage really be filling up my mind with things
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mistfallengw2 · 2 years
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I'm still trying to dig myself out of artblock, but in the meantime I played the new episode and it's so juicy~
I'm gonna ignore OCs stuff for a bit because I'm still trying to make sense of the timeline (since we're still in 1335 AE, I'll have to rethink some of the post-EoD character moments I had planned), but on a more meta and "where are we headed lore-wise" perspective I'm pretty excited already (putting my ramblings under read more because of obvious spoilers)
Okay so, it's now a given that we're gonna deal with demons and such things, and that opens up a ton of options lore-wise.
What caught my attention were those wurm-like things in the Ley-Line Nexus of Gyala Delve, because my partner and I were certain we had seen them before, but couldn't figure our where. Turns out, these toothy-friends(?) were all around the Mouth of Torment in the Desolation.
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Now, we don't know what those things are exactly and it could all simply be an asset flip of "just demonic/spooky decorations", but let me don a lil' fancy tinfoil hat for a moment.
It's pretty interesting that we find them only in those two specific places, especially since they were centerstage yet just out of the central focus in the new episode, as if hinting at something. The Mouth of Torment was the place where Abaddon got defeated by the other Gods way back when, so what if Abaddon is the connection/hint?
It's also interesting that we're also getting a new Fractal in the next few months, and with all the demonic stuff, my mind goes straight to Season 1's "Cutthroat Politics", where players had the chance to decide which Fractals they wanted next.
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Kiel won and we got Thaumanova, which was a neat addition to Scarlet's lore and surely far more relevant to the story of Season 1, especially by the time it came out (and more recently it came back to relevance due to EoD's stuff with Ankka and Gorrik).
Still, they must have had scripts and concepts ready for the Abaddon fractal, and I've always considered it a shame that we never got to see any of it. However, now things are relevant again for that specific fractal: we're dealing with demons, Season 1 was just re-released (even if Cutthroat Politics wasn't in it), and Evon seems to be renovating his company in some way (and seemingly really wanted to stress the point lmao).
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Okay, maybe we're getting Abaddon fractal, but then what?
Maybe not much other than juicy lore stuff, but then we'd be missing only one "friend" of Abaddon's trio of mischievous gods. In Wing 5 we face the deposed god Dhuum, we defeat Abaddon in that new Fractal... but what about Balthazar's half-brother, Menzies?
We know nothing about the guy, other that he's evil and that his and Balthy's army squabbled in the Fissure of Woe for centuries, only to later be quieter than he used to be. And now we see his Abyssals strut around the lower levels of the map, along with Nightmares and other creepy crawlies. Would it be a stretch to assume that the God of Destruction would want to take advantage of the situation, now that the Gods have left Tyria (and his rival bro got axed) and the threat of elder dragons is no more? That maybe he learned some tricks from Abaddon and decided that the former lair of Kanaxai would be a nice place to do his own evil thing in? Is the Haze his doing?
Is the new big baddy going to be Menzies?
Are we going to kick his godly butt in a big story fight that will get turned into a Strike, completing the holy (pun intended) endgame-PvE trinity of Raid, Fractal and Strike?
*removes lil' fancy tinfoil hat and apologizes for the likely confusing rambling*
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I'm Eager to see how the public Rp scene completely Forgets how the Wizards and Astral Ward Work. " Actually I'm a Grand wizard 8th Degree and master of the bastion of Strength ( the cool sounding one) " And Like. Not to Knock those kinds of writers. You do you, Boo. Just don't expect Anyone to take that Seriously. Because Most people want to rp As a Part of Tyria . Even my most Overpowered Characters Have zero reason to know the ward even exists. BECAUSE THAT"S THEIR ENTIRE THING, SECRECY . This isn't like the Whispers who are " Spies " With a public Relations Division. These are people so Dedicated to privacy and staying hidden that they'll legit tomb-rob and fuck up everyone's day if someone gets too close to figuring them out. Like , Please . This is a Genuinely Good take on Secrecy and Hidden Societies, Let it stay Hidden.
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khorren · 2 years
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A friendo, and one of the smartest lore people I know has been doing some lore diving from the old Chinese GW websites and after cleaning up some machine translated text has posted about some Lyssa stuff.
He explains that it's not certain whether this is canon or not, but hey. Lyssa stuff. Go take a read :) Hopefully some likes and nice comments will motivate him to do the other things he's found :D
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jackfuckingtwist · 1 year
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youtube
the first part in my story recap series, out just in time for the new expansion!
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