Ley-Line Core Details [Daybreak Spoilers]

[Narcemus.1348]

I'm not saying that they couldn't have gotten to Divinity's Reach through any of those gates. I just find it interesting that there appears to be a distinct lack heading adjacent to DR. It feels like it is one of those small things that ArenaNet adds into the game for foreshadowing not knowing if anyone would even pick up on it. Small enough that it could be nothing, but having the appearance of being intentional.

[Ayakaru.6583]

You know, we should be having portal events in the core zones now. Maybe as often as 4h-cycles. For 15 minutes portals appear with awakened, and if they're all closed within 15 minutes you get a bonus reward.

Pro: new people can participate and will be curious about what's happening, and will be pulled into buying PoF

[Narcemus.1348]

> @Ayakaru.6583 said:

> You know, we should be having portal events in the core zones now. Maybe as often as 4h-cycles. For 15 minutes portals appear with awakened, and if they're all closed within 15 minutes you get a bonus reward.

> Pro: new people can participate and will be curious about what's happening, and will be pulled into buying PoF

 

AKA Scarlet's portal events.

[Mephu Tahm Jr.1962]

> @"Athrenn.9468" said:

> The Inquest did team up with pirates at some point to form the Aetherblades due to Scarlet's influence so I wouldn't rule their collaboration out completely. I'm not sure _why_ they did the whole Aetherblade thing with Scarlet or what was in it for them, but who knows.

 

I assumed that was because Scarlet's villainy was so far beyond the Inquest, that she could manipulate them with ease. She was able to get all the villanous sects (for species that had consciously good and evil divisions) to unite blindly for an arbitrary cause that was primary for her own sadistic pleasure.

 

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @Athrenn.9468 said:

> > > @Orimidu.9604 said:

> > > 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.

 

I love how we're saying the statue is destroyed but not the plaque when half of the statue is still visibly intact. I believe it was simply vandalized, similar to how Balthazar's statue in Amnoon has a bucket over its head. What is curious however, is why Joko didn't have it destroyed altogether.

 

In fact, I'm very curious why all the book-burning stuff (and similar things) is happening, like right now. How many years did he have to eradicate and revise Elonian history, but it's happening now? Come on. According to the timeline in the wiki, he had almost two fricking centuries to do it. Miyani says Joko rules Elona with an iron fist, but... he isn't really? Why did he go to the effort of building all that wall when he wants to rule the entire world anyway? Like, he decided he was actually afraid of stuff beyond the wall? I'm thinking there are a lot of complications that we just don't know about yet.

 

> @"Athrenn.9468" said:

> Speaking of the Scarab Plague and Joko's mysteriously acquired interest in 'bugs', is there any chance that the empty specimen tanks below the royal chamber in Fahranur were holding scarabs? He could have had the Inquest working to reproduce the plague and turn it into a biological weapon for his war of conquest since it probably can't hurt his undead troops but it could decimate the living. I'm not sure if my instance was glitching or not but all of the tanks were empty when I found them after the end fight.

 

They're all empty in appearance. However the single tank that has status "escaped" is catalogued as 1-s, which I guess refers to Scarab.

 

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> 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*.

 

Given how prominent giant beetle ogre pets are in this game, scarabs wouldn't be that far off.

 

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

>

> The base there was not about following Kralkatorrik south (which happened in the past year)

 

According to the timeline, it happened 10 years ago as of PoF story. But you're right, that's still later than the earliest console log dates.

 

Frankly I'm often annoyed how there's always an Inquest lab or Ogre kraal or skritt village or bandit camp in a new map. It'll be hard to convince me that they didn't just put that there because they didn't have the resources and/or ideas to put anything else, but didn't want to leave the area blank either, and that then got factored into the storyline. Inquest can show up anywhere in the world, no questions asked. Well, fine. I will be an Inquest too. If the lore doesn't add up to my satisfaction (which it doesn't in this case), I'm not even going to bother with trying to figure it out.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Mephu Tahm Jr.1962" said:

> I love how we're saying the statue is destroyed but not the plaque when half of the statue is still visibly intact. I believe it was simply vandalized, similar to how Balthazar's statue in Amnoon has a bucket over its head. What is curious however, is why Joko didn't have it destroyed altogether.

>

> In fact, I'm very curious why all the book-burning stuff (and similar things) is happening, like right now. How many years did he have to eradicate and revise Elonian history, but it's happening now? Come on. According to the timeline in the wiki, he had almost two fricking centuries to do it. Miyani says Joko rules Elona with an iron fist, but... he isn't really? Why did he go to the effort of building all that wall when he wants to rule the entire world anyway? Like, he decided he was actually afraid of stuff beyond the wall? I'm thinking there are a lot of complications that we just don't know about yet.

 

We're saying the statue was destroyed because that's its description. It's model is also very much destroyed, as only the legs of an individual are left, and not even all of the legs.

 

Joko seems to have sealed off Fahranur altogether with his reign, rather than dismantle it. Likely because it'd be easier, and even in GW1 there were still spores of the Scarab Plague left so it'd be dangerous to destroy the place as 1) you'd risk contaminating the workers who may return (even if you kill the grunts, overseers and the likely probably wouldn't); 2) disturbing the spores and other things would cause airborne migration. In other words, it would risk the Scarab Plague spreading once again. Joko may be a egotistical narcissistic megalomaniac but he's no idiot.

 

Because of that, it makes sense the statue wouldn't be destroyed by him. It was likely destroyed during the Scarab Plague's time, which was roughly 900 years ago, and further worn down by time.

 

As for the book-burning stuff: people fighting Joko's regime (e.g., Order of Shadows, Sunspears) that remain in hiding preserved books from Joko's initial book burning situation. As Joko burned books, they likely replicated the books they saved and reintroduced them.

 

And as for The Bone Wall: it was built to prevent defectors from leaving his kingdom. Even if he wants to rule the world (does he? This is our first real show of him caring about beyond Elonian borders, and even if the reasoning is flimsy he is doing it to spite the Commander; and doing over the top conquering to spite someone is not out of the ordinary for Joko, what with enslaving an entire bloodline to spite Turai Ossa).

 

> @"Mephu Tahm Jr.1962" said:

> According to the timeline, it happened 10 years ago as of PoF story. But you're right, that's still later than the earliest console log dates.

>

> Frankly I'm often annoyed how there's always an Inquest lab or Ogre kraal or skritt village or bandit camp in a new map. It'll be hard to convince me that they didn't just put that there because they didn't have the resources and/or ideas to put anything else, but didn't want to leave the area blank either, and that then got factored into the storyline. Inquest can show up anywhere in the world, no questions asked. Well, fine. I will be an Inquest too. If the lore doesn't add up to my satisfaction (which it doesn't in this case), I'm not even going to bother with trying to figure it out.

 

Kralkatorrik flew to the northern Crystal Desert 10 years ago. He then flew into Vabbi in 1329 AE when Mordremoth died. Fahranur's lab is too far south to be for following Kralkatorrik into the northern Crystal Desert.

 

As for ogres, skritt, bandits showing up everywhere: well, so far, they've only showed up where it does make some sense. Ogres have only showed up near the Blazeridge Stepeps (the sole exception being the ogre camp in HoT, which were part of the Pact); skritt were like asura and begin popping up all over Central Tyria with Primordus forcing them out; in HoT, they were part of the Pact and they've not shown up in the Crystal Desert except a few in Amnoon (likely related to the other travelers from Central Tyria, probably Consortium in all honesty). And bandits are, well, you'd never have a city without crime, or a kingdom without bandits. Ever.

 

As for Inquest showing up - they do get overplayed quite a bit, but this time around it seems they needed an explanation for Joko's sudden invasion and with the Inquest having been experimenting on gateless teleporters since the game's launch (see CoE teleporter path), it's not unexpected they go with Inquest here. And they're easy to use since the inquest's goal is literally "understand everything" so they'd inevitably have an interest in, well, everything and everywhere. That makes them an easy foe to just plop in anywhere.

[Athrenn.9468]

I was surprised by how much the Astralarium scholars were able to get away with, honestly. Joko completely trashed Mehtu's library (perhaps intentionally to rewrite history?) but the Astralarium is able to hide an entire restricted archives worth of forbidden texts in the basement. It's not something that I've paid much attention to, but I still found it odd. There's such a stark contrast between Vehtendi and the Astralarium in terms of government control.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Well Istan is likely to have the least restrictions due to being a distant vassal state of Joko's, so it's not unreasonable that the most unnoticed resistance is there. Meanwhile, Vabbi is the heart of Joko's new empire, so changes and overseeing things would be even stronger.

 

Though I do think they overplayed the "forbidden texts in the open" bit a tad much.

[Patty.3268]

Regarding a possible new capital: anyone else noticed the grey cube on the world map, right in the sea north/north-west of Istan? Size and shape are perfectly and suspiciously matching those of Rata Sum and Novus. Could be another Rata (possibly run by Inquest only) or Inquest base. Maybe Joko tries to invade Tyria from there again, and we will go there to stop him in one of the upcoming episodes?

[BobbyT.7192]

> @"Patty.3268" said:

> Regarding a possible new capital: anyone else noticed the grey cube on the world map, right in the sea north/north-west of Istan? Size and shape are perfectly and suspiciously matching those of Rata Sum and Novus. Could be another Rata (possibly run by Inquest only) or Inquest base. Maybe Joko tries to invade Tyria from there again, and we will go there to stop him in one of the upcoming episodes?

 

Actually yeah if you look at this photo from that_shaman, it does show a Rata south of Dajkah

 

 

https://www.thatshaman.com/tools/guide/?v=3&x=-1595&y=808&z=0