Ley-Line Core Details [Daybreak Spoilers]

[Athrenn.9468]

> @Orimidu.9604 said:

> Well, what about the containment pods in the final room of Fahranur? IIRC, only one of them said “extinct”. Could be referring to the dragons, with the base having no communication after mordremoth’s death, but what if it’s referring to the Six?

 

I don't know what to make of that yet. At first, I thought maybe the pods contained scarab species that Joko and/or the Inquest were experimenting on to create some sort of biological weapon to deploy on the people of the northern continent—or threaten to deploy it if they don't bend the knee. Taimi said at the very end of the episode that Joko had a fascination with 'bugs' which could somehow relate to the pods.

[Orimidu.9604]

Add another to the pile of mysteries Fahranur has to offer: at the destroyed statue, you can read a plaque. It says, "Blessed by the Five is Dahlah, daughter to the king. May her life be full of love, contentment, and good health. May the newest royal daughters together rule Fahranur and lead us to a brighter future." The statue is of Dahlah, then. Why would it be destroyed but the plaque left intact? Nahlah was the one blamed for the plague.

[Athrenn.9468]

> @Orimidu.9604 said:

> Add another to the pile of mysteries Fahranur has to offer: at the destroyed statue, you can read a plaque. It says, "Blessed by the Five is Dahlah, daughter to the king. May her life be full of love, contentment, and good health. May the newest royal daughters together rule Fahranur and lead us to a brighter future." The statue is of Dahlah, then. Why would it be destroyed but the plaque left intact? Nahlah was the one blamed for the plague.

 

I noticed that too and found it strange that there were two plaques at the base of the statue but both of them had duplicate text when interacting with them. Part of me wonders if they were meant to be Nahlah and Dahlah but they made a mistake and added two Dahlahs instead.

[Orimidu.9604]

The six asura gates in the royal chamber were programmed for:

 

-Metrica Province

-Diessa Plateau

-Snowden Drifts

-Mount Maelstrom

-Gendarran Fields

-Caledon Forest

 

Discovered via interacting with the terminals near the gates.

[draxynnic.3719]

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> I agree with Aaron on this. Please, just let it be Joko and spare us the sudden identity reveal. I'm willing to accept Joko as a villain who is finally being taken seriously as an aggressive warleader. The last thing I want is some kind of "It was actually Lyssa all along!" reveal in the penultimate episode right before the real Joko is killed off in an anticlimactic fight when we finally find him. They only have half a dozen episodes to tell a story. That isn't enough time to build up to a villain swap that feels satisfying. Story length determines complexity and you can only do so much with six episodes.

 

It is worth noting that S4 may be longer than S3. S3 got held back substantially by the combination of raids and the devs having to recover from the push to get HoT finished on time (HoT was, for a number of reasons, much more rushed than PoF, while PoF seems to have been developed on a more sustainable cadence), being released nine months after HoT, while S4E1 was released at the start of the standard 'window' of 2-3 months between installments right after PoF. If the next expansion spends about as long in development as PoF does, we could probably expect to see S4 having 8-10 installments.

 

That said...

 

> @UnbentMars.9126 said:

> > @Athrenn.9468 said:

> > I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be peeved if we ended up facing yet another rogue god with a borrowed army right after we just did that plot with Balthazar. Joko has a clear-cut motivation: rule forever and expand his empire. Maybe we'll learn more about his character in the process and finally know his origin story. That's a lot more interesting to me than a plot twist that's not even a twist because we just did it less than a year ago.

>

> Are we discussing what we'd like to see in the upcoming story, or are we discussing what potential things there are based on what's been shown so far?

 

Is it possible that ArenaNet is pulling a bait-and-switch? Yes, of course it is. It's _always_ possible that things aren't what they appear to be. That part of the discussion is over.

 

Now we get into the question of... is it _likely?_

 

In that respect, we need to look deeper at the evidence. There is dialogue in the Domain of the Lost that implies that the chains binding Joko might dissipate on Balthaddon's death - however, the PC does not have the luxury of referring to wikis that we do, so it makes sense that the PC might not have picked up on this, and thus is under the assumption that Joko will remain trapped indefinitely. Therefore, the PC assumes throughout the chapter that Joko is still bound... but comes to the conclusion at the end that he has been released.

 

It seems unlikely to me that the female mysterious figure is impersonating Joko. It's likely that she's foreshadowing something, but if she is impersonating Joko, why let herself be seen in a non-Joko appearance at all?

 

On the question of likelihood, the question of whether it's good writing also comes up. There are quite a few people already annoyed with the bait-and-switch of Lazarus and Balthazar, for various reasons. Pulling the same trick in two seasons running would, I think, be a very bad move on ArenaNet's part.

[Orimidu.9604]

Interacting with the Inquest Terminal yields the following:

 

Track Your Package: Pets: 112090 - Delivered, signed by Tel (Tel Todd? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tombstone_(Grendich_Ruins))

 

Number 7's last attempted delivery was "17 years, 8 months, 9 days ago". If we're in 1330 AE now, that places the delivery attempt at roughly 1312-1313.

 

I play as a human, and thus I cannot read the Inquest Data Wall nor interact with the Central Control Console aside from OP's summary. Someone with an Asura should try interacting with those objects probably.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

In addition to the console that Athrenn mentions in the opneing post, there is another console that has logs of shipments. One about shipment of "pets" mentions that it arrived at Fahranur *17 years ago*.

 

The base there was not about following Kralkatorrik south (which happened in the past year), nor was it about an alliance with Joko based on the recordings of asura finding one asura odd before the whole place was assaulted (you hear these recordings in the first encounter with awakened asura) - during these recordings, you also hear the living Inquest calling the undead ones *risen*, meaning the Inquest were still pretty damn inept in their knowledge of differentiating between Awakened and risen. So they had minimal investigation of Elona itself, and ergo could not have been dealing with Joko because if they had, they'd know an Awakened when they saw one, asura or not, and wouldn't think them to be a risen.

 

Hell, the Inquest lab there predates the discovery of Rata Novus and Rata Arcanum, apparently.

 

As for the mysterious figure: given that's a she, she's definitely not the one who had captured Taimi and interrogated her. The voice of who captured Taimi matched Joko's voice, and was most definitely not a female's voice, and it was the voice that prompted the PC to go "oh shit Joko's back afterall", it's probably safe to think that Joko is back (especially combined with the fact that the Judge told us the bindings on Joko were powered by Balthazar, and Balth is dead now so no more power source for those chains even if they would remain postmortem).

 

The Mysterious Figure will likely play a role like Caudecus did in Season 3 - a mid-season boss. While having a significance akin to Lady Valette Wi who we barely saw in Episode 1 in a similar manner.

 

I didn't catch her wielding Joko's Scepter in the vision, but I also doubt that Joko would let someone wield *his* Scepter for him, given the importance he placed in it in GW1. (EDIT: [it's not Joko's staff, it's just an Awakened Staff](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Awakened_Staff) - Going into more onto the Mysterious Figure in the thread dedicated to her)

 

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> > @Orimidu.9604 said:

> > Add another to the pile of mysteries Fahranur has to offer: at the destroyed statue, you can read a plaque. It says, "Blessed by the Five is Dahlah, daughter to the king. May her life be full of love, contentment, and good health. May the newest royal daughters together rule Fahranur and lead us to a brighter future." The statue is of Dahlah, then. Why would it be destroyed but the plaque left intact? Nahlah was the one blamed for the plague.

>

> I noticed that too and found it strange that there were two plaques at the base of the statue but both of them had duplicate text when interacting with them. Part of me wonders if they were meant to be Nahlah and Dahlah but they made a mistake and added two Dahlahs instead.

 

That was my thought on the plaques as well.

 

Both Dahlah and Nahlah were blamed for the Scarab Plague, if the statue was destroyed to spite them, it would make sense.

[draxynnic.3719]

One other possibility is that Joko destroyed them. While the historical record doesn't explicitly mention him until later, I've always had a suspicion that Joko might go back to the later years of the Primeval Dynasty and might even have had a hand in the original Scarab Plague - it's possible that he has some historical grudge with the sisters.

[Orimidu.9604]


 

Here's our mysterious figure. Safe to say she isn't using Joko's Scepter. It's definitely a 'she' now. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a better angle due to the stuns.

[Orimidu.9604]



 

Stolen from reddit.

 

[Athrenn.9468]

She could be Konig's red-headed NPC woman, the necromancy henchman. I'm not sure what that would imply just yet but the hair looks right.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

> @draxynnic.3719 said:

> One other possibility is that Joko destroyed them. While the historical record doesn't explicitly mention him until later, I've always had a suspicion that Joko might go back to the later years of the Primeval Dynasty and might even have had a hand in the original Scarab Plague - it's possible that he has some historical grudge with the sisters.

Didn't the sisters themselves kind of hint at that during PoF when you go to the Tomb of the Primeval Kings? IIRC, they make a big deal about how much they dislike him, and claim that he isn't a Primeval King despite his claims as such.

 

[JayMack.8295]

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> I agree with Aaron on this. Please, just let it be Joko and spare us the sudden identity reveal. I'm willing to accept Joko as a villain who is finally being taken seriously as an aggressive warleader. The last thing I want is some kind of "It was actually Lyssa all along!" reveal in the penultimate episode right before the real Joko is killed off in an anticlimactic fight when we finally find him. They only have half a dozen episodes to tell a story. That isn't enough time to build up to a villain swap that feels satisfying. Story length determines complexity and you can only do so much with six episodes.

 

While I'd also like it to be Joko and not yet another disguised character, nothing says Season 4 will be 6 episodes long. If they want to keep 2 years between expansions, they could make Season 4 12 episodes long.

 

They were even coy about how many there would be for Season 4 in the recent AMA. I don't think there's any set in stone '6 episodes per season' cadence at the moment.

 

I'm fine with them adding a couple high-ranked Awakened NPCs for story depth so it isn't JUST Joko we encounter, but I hope he's definitely the mastermind behind this plan and not some pawn/disguise in some other person's masterplan. We've had a lot of that.

 

[draxynnic.3719]

> @"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:

> > @draxynnic.3719 said:

> > One other possibility is that Joko destroyed them. While the historical record doesn't explicitly mention him until later, I've always had a suspicion that Joko might go back to the later years of the Primeval Dynasty and might even have had a hand in the original Scarab Plague - it's possible that he has some historical grudge with the sisters.

> Didn't the sisters themselves kind of hint at that during PoF when you go to the Tomb of the Primeval Kings? IIRC, they make a big deal about how much they dislike him, and claim that he isn't a Primeval King despite his claims as such.

>

 

That can be interpreted either way - they might never have known him in life, but they're purred off about what he's been doing since their death, including his usurpation of a title that they consider he has no claim to.

[Athrenn.9468]

I was expecting Joko to have rebuilt Fahranur and made it the capital of his empire. Fahranur is a symbol: the fall of the primeval dynasty. He could have rebuilt the city and used his propaganda machine to declare it as an omen that he is the true heir to the primeval bloodline, the first king to sit the throne of Fahranur in a thousand years. Who would dare say that he is unfit to rule when the gods themselves have shown their blessing by allowing him to conquer the scarab plague that ravaged the first city?

[draxynnic.3719]

To be honest, I was expecting the same, especially when it was hinted that he now had more seats of government than just the Bone Palace. It could be that the hinted new capital is at Jahai, though - being fairly central to his empire and symbolic of his "victory" over Turai Ossa.

[Bast.7253]

> @Orimidu.9604 said:

> 

> 

>

> Stolen from reddit.

>

 

Is it just me or does she look like she showed up looking for the Pulp Fiction dance floor

[Bast.7253]

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> > @Orimidu.9604 said:

> > Add another to the pile of mysteries Fahranur has to offer: at the destroyed statue, you can read a plaque. It says, "Blessed by the Five is Dahlah, daughter to the king. May her life be full of love, contentment, and good health. May the newest royal daughters together rule Fahranur and lead us to a brighter future." The statue is of Dahlah, then. Why would it be destroyed but the plaque left intact? Nahlah was the one blamed for the plague.

>

> I noticed that too and found it strange that there were two plaques at the base of the statue but both of them had duplicate text when interacting with them. Part of me wonders if they were meant to be Nahlah and Dahlah but they made a mistake and added two Dahlahs instead.

 

I found that strange too. And even if that were the case and they were supposed to be two different names, why is there only ONE statue? And if it happened naturally, where did the other pieces of the statue go? Shouldn't we see the rubble of the rest of the body lying around? It seemed like it was definitely hinting at or eluding to something, plaques aside.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

> @Athrenn.9468 said:

> I was expecting Joko to have rebuilt Fahranur and made it the capital of his empire. Fahranur is a symbol: the fall of the primeval dynasty. He could have rebuilt the city and used his propaganda machine to declare it as an omen that he is the true heir to the primeval bloodline, the first king to sit the throne of Fahranur in a thousand years. Who would dare say that he is unfit to rule when the gods themselves have shown their blessing by allowing him to conquer the scarab plague that ravaged the first city?

 

Another interesting wrinkle- when we ask Kito about Fahranur, he says "no one gets into Fahranur. Or wants to. It's... infested." He might just be talking about the Awakened, or local superstition about the ruins, but he seems too well-informed for the later, and the former is a nonsensical concern when directed towards someone who's tromped around the Bone Palace. It's possible that something in the ruins was preventing Joko from building there- maybe the Inquest, or maybe the Scarab Plague really did linger there.

[Zaklex.6308]

Keep in mind that the First City is actually outside the Bone Wall...so technically it's not within Joko'd domain, not saying he wouldn't have kept an eye on the place, but he also probably didn't want to go near it at first. Keep in mind that it's possibly the origin of the Scarab Plague(at least we know it was devastated by it, and people could have traveled to the mainland spreading it from Istan). The Inquest lab was built there only because of the Ley Line hub, funny how they found it...but they really didn't find it, Zinn did, as there's a message from him indicating that he was kicked out of both Rata Sum and Rata Novus(but not Rata Arcanum), which means for some reason he went to Istan after Novus but before trying to terra form Draconis Mons. As for the subject chambers, if you check all of the, some of the subjects are dead, alive...and one is missing(besides them being all empty). I'm going with Lonai as the mysterious figure, and that Joko, whether still trapped or not can speak through his higher Lt., which would explain how we heard his voice over the comm.

[Narcemus.1348]

> @Orimidu.9604 said:

> The six asura gates in the royal chamber were programmed for:

>

> -Metrica Province

> -Diessa Plateau

> -Snowden Drifts

> -Mount Maelstrom

> -Gendarran Fields

> -Caledon Forest

>

> Discovered via interacting with the terminals near the gates.

 

I was just read this and made an interesting observation. Each and every one of those is right next to a main game capital except for one. They sent forces right outside of Rata Sum, The Grove, Lion's Arch, Fort Trinity, Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel. But they did not place forces right outside of Divinity's Reach. Now, you could claim that they just sent forces for both to Gendarran, but they sent individual forces to both Metrica and Caledon even though they are in such close proximity. I have to feel like they did this on purpose for someone to catch. It is a conspiracy people!

 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @Narcemus.1348 said:

> > @Orimidu.9604 said:

> > The six asura gates in the royal chamber were programmed for:

> >

> > -Metrica Province

> > -Diessa Plateau

> > -Snowden Drifts

> > -Mount Maelstrom

> > -Gendarran Fields

> > -Caledon Forest

> >

> > Discovered via interacting with the terminals near the gates.

>

> I was just read this and made an interesting observation. Each and every one of those is right next to a main game capital except for one. They sent forces right outside of Rata Sum, The Grove, Lion's Arch, Fort Trinity, Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel. But they did not place forces right outside of Divinity's Reach. Now, you could claim that they just sent forces for both to Gendarran, but they sent individual forces to both Metrica and Caledon even though they are in such close proximity. I have to feel like they did this on purpose for someone to catch. It is a conspiracy people!

 

In addition to those locations though, there was the "main asura gate" which led to an Inquest lab which had classified location on the console. But when we look through the gate, we could see at least three other asura gates in that lab.

 

That means those aren't the only locations Awakened were sent to.

 

In fact, if you talk to Rox at the end of the mission (or was it Braham and Rox replies as well?), Rox and Braham were in Hoelbrak when the portals started showing up "across the city". Meaning that not only were the Awakened sent outside Hoelbrak, but inside as well (and then Rox and Braham literally jumped through a portal sending out Awakened, landed in an Inquest base, then went through another and landed in Fahranur, apparently).

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

one other thing i noticed is that Fahranur is an instance, its not part of a 'timelocked map' so they could reuse and change it over the course of s4.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @Narcemus.1348 said:

> > > @Orimidu.9604 said:

> > > The six asura gates in the royal chamber were programmed for:

> > >

> > > -Metrica Province

> > > -Diessa Plateau

> > > -Snowden Drifts

> > > -Mount Maelstrom

> > > -Gendarran Fields

> > > -Caledon Forest

> > >

> > > Discovered via interacting with the terminals near the gates.

> >

> > I was just read this and made an interesting observation. Each and every one of those is right next to a main game capital except for one. They sent forces right outside of Rata Sum, The Grove, Lion's Arch, Fort Trinity, Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel. But they did not place forces right outside of Divinity's Reach. Now, you could claim that they just sent forces for both to Gendarran, but they sent individual forces to both Metrica and Caledon even though they are in such close proximity. I have to feel like they did this on purpose for someone to catch. It is a conspiracy people!

>

> In addition to those locations though, there was the "main asura gate" which led to an Inquest lab which had classified location on the console. But when we look through the gate, we could see at least three other asura gates in that lab.

>

> That means those aren't the only locations Awakened were sent to.

>

> In fact, if you talk to Rox at the end of the mission (or was it Braham and Rox replies as well?), Rox and Braham were in Hoelbrak when the portals started showing up "across the city". Meaning that not only were the Awakened sent outside Hoelbrak, but inside as well (and then Rox and Braham literally jumped through a portal sending out Awakened, landed in an Inquest base, then went through another and landed in Fahranur, apparently).

 

There are also the first two gates we break right after Braham comes to our rescue. I didn't have time to get a close look at them, but one of those might have been Krytan.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Amanda Whitemoon.6173" said:

> one other thing i noticed is that Fahranur is an instance, its not part of a 'timelocked map' so they could reuse and change it over the course of s4.

 

They can reuse it, but not really change it without affecting prior uses of the instance unless they create a whole new location; they could likely add/remove some objects with similar tech we saw in S2's flashbacks but not much more.

 

> @"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:

> There are also the first two gates we break right after Braham comes to our rescue. I didn't have time to get a close look at them, but one of those might have been Krytan.

 

They showed the same visuals as the Diessa Plateau and Metrica Province ones.