Wait, how did we know Mordremoth's name? (Answered!)

[Batel.9206]

Spoilers, obviously, for Living World Season Two.

 

I'm playing LWS2 for the first time, and...how did we go from, in episode one, wondering about "a dragon" that Scarlet had maybe awakened, and suddenly at the beginning of episode two, knowing that that dragon is called Mordremoth and that it's the one who is behind the Mordrem attack on Prosperity. I wasn't playing this game at the time of the releases of those episodes...did I miss something major happening in between releases? (It sure created a weird sense of disconnect to be exploring the ruined, vine-strangled town of Prosperity in episode one, and *nobody reacted to it*.)

 

How did the Commander, Marjory, Kasmeer, et al., know Mordremoth's name? Was it stated somewhere and I completely missed it?

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

So this is a classic example of "bad exposition".

 

There's three things behind this 'revelation' to note that caused this error.

 

1. Players knew the name, not because it was told in lore, but because some of [subject Alpha](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Subject_Alpha)'s attacks are named after Elder Dragons, including Mordremoth. This was the first and, for a long time, only case of Mordremoth's name in the game. But it had become so well known that almost all players knew the name.

2. Season 1, which was temporary content, had two versions for its finale made. The first, scrapped before release, version which was fully(?) voiced had Scarlet Briar reveal Mordremoth's name to the players as she died. This line was removed in the rewrite, because the original had Marjory die and the rewrite didn't (because at the time, Marjory was among the favorite biconic characters).

3. At this time of the story, while not revealed openly to players, the name Mordremoth wasn't hidden. Kasmeer and Marjory knew due to their Priory connections and noble tutoring (anti-respectively), while the PC knew because they're the Pact Commander and they had resources to look this up "off-screen" so it was something they knew but never had a reason to talk about (yet).

 

These three facts led to our first exposure to the name being a random name drop treated as if everyone and their mother among the playerbase should know.

[Batel.9206]

...well. That's...frustrating. I didn't know about the unreleased version of the Season One finale (or, at least, that part of it; I knew there was a version written where Marjory died, but not about Scarlet revealing Mordremoth's name). And since I didn't play the dungeons, I had no idea about Subject Alpha...darn. Thank you for clearing this up, Konig. :)

 

One other thing: talking to Kasmeer at the beginning of Entanglement, she mentions that Aerin said a Tyrian leader would die. Uhhh...when did he say that? I just fought the guy and he never said anything close to that. Did I miss something *else* in the middle of his crazy ramblings, or was that another case of bad exposition? (I looked on the wiki to see if I could find the answer, but noticed a giant spoiler warning on Aerin's page and backed out before I accidentally read something I didn't want to know yet.)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

You didn't miss anything; it was a major criticism at the time of release. Obviously they couldn't go back (at least, not easily) and rewrite the preceding stories to make it more clear how we learned the name.

 

Here's one of the old forum's threads from July 2014 discussing it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/How-does-my-character-know-Mordremoth

 

For what it's worth, here's what I wrote four years ago:

>! > I will rephrase my earlier comment from above as:

>! >

>! > I don’t care about some possible canonical explanation as to for how my character knew it was a dragon and which one.

>! >

>! > The point is that when it mattered — during the story itself — it seemed to come from nowhere, without any foundation. That took away from an otherwise well-written and excellent story.

>! >

>! > So Mr Stein and Ms McCoy can tell us why we should have known, but that won’t make me forget that I stopped playing Entanglement for a few minutes to try to figure out whether I missed something in the last chapter or recent dialogue (I hadn’t).

>! >

>! > I really love the story overall and I love how ANet is telling it this time, with each of the NPCs providing an alternative perspective of events that fits their personality/background. I was just jarred by how the writers handled the most important “reveal” of Season 2 (and perhaps the most important of Season 1).

 

One person wrote:

> Your character only knows because he/she is, in fact, a minion of Mordremoth.

Which, in retrospect, was 20% correct.

 

Here's what @"Bobby Stein.3612" wrote [around the same time](https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Naming-Mordremoth/4236417):

>! > I want to address the comments about the player character’s knowledge of Mordremoth and how that fits into the story. For some players, this may have felt like it came out of nowhere. Up to this point, the only explicit mention of Mordremoth in the core campaign was on the Teeth of Mordremoth skill in Crucible of Eternity.

>! >

>! > Season 2 of the Living World assumes that the player character has completed the Personal Story, killed Zhaitan, and has attained the rank of Pact Commander. It also assumes completion of season 1, that the player character killed Scarlet, and has a friendship with Rox, Braham, and the rest of the crew. Because of the PC’s assumed rank in an organization that deals in fighting dragons, and that such knowledge isn’t really a secret (but isn’t widely known as characters in the world have no reason to openly discuss it until now) we wanted the player to make the call by identifying the dragon in a conversation among friends. In hindsight, there should have been more build up or discovery before reaching that point. Lesson learned.

>! >

>! > We want to seed Tyria with lore bits and other items that can better educate adventurous players seeking more knowledge on the subject. Keep your eyes open in future releases. Thanks so much for taking the time to post your feedback regarding episode 2.

 

And finally there's a response by Steven Waller from an interview with [the since archived _Massively_ webzine](http://web.archive.org/web/20140729134632/http://massively.joystiq.com:80/2014/07/22/flameseeker-chronicles-introducing-guild-wars-2s-dragons-reac)

>! > I asked Waller about a jarring detail in Entanglement that left a lot of players confused: How did our characters know Mordremoth's name well enough to identify the dragon to Kasmeer? Waller said that the player characters have access to the Pact's information and would have heard about all of the dragons while preparing to combat Zhaitan, but admittedly I found that explanation a little disappointing. Prior to Mordremoth's reveal at the end of season one of the living world, the dragon's existence had only been broadly hinted at; even the Durmand Priory seemed to have only vague confirmation that there were six dragons instead of five, and that was one of the biggest lore bombshells uncovered at GW2's launch. Having Mordremoth's existence and name assumed to be common knowledge is anticlimactic, although Waller did say that the writing could have better explained how the player character came by that knowledge.

 

I've used the spoiler tags above to keep the post compact, not because any of it amounts to a spoiler lo these many years since the story launched.

 

tl;dr remains: you didn't miss anything. You're in good company thinking that in all that foreshadowing that there was even a sixth dragon, that no one actually mentioned the "missing" dragon's name.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Batel.9206" said:

> ...well. That's...frustrating. I didn't know about the unreleased version of the Season One finale (or, at least, that part of it; I knew there was a version written where Marjory died, but not about Scarlet revealing Mordremoth's name). And since I didn't play the dungeons, I had no idea about Subject Alpha...darn. Thank you for clearing this up, Konig. :)

>

> One other thing: talking to Kasmeer at the beginning of Entanglement, she mentions that Aerin said a Tyrian leader would die. Uhhh...when did he say that? I just fought the guy and he never said anything close to that. Did I miss something *else* in the middle of his crazy ramblings, or was that another case of bad exposition? (I looked on the wiki to see if I could find the answer, but noticed a giant spoiler warning on Aerin's page and backed out before I accidentally read something I didn't want to know yet.)

 

When you examine his pack after killing him there's dialogue indicating a paper had it written down about killing a leader "and the rest will follow".

[Batel.9206]

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> When you examine his pack after killing him there's dialogue indicating a paper had it written down about killing a leader "and the rest will follow".

 

...haha WHOOPS! I forgot about that. (Somehow. Despite having gone through that instance and *writing down the dialogue* half an hour ago. I have a *terrible* memory...) Thank you! :sweat_smile:

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> tl;dr remains: you didn't miss anything. You're in good company thinking that in all that foreshadowing that there was even a sixth dragon, that no one actually mentioned the "missing" dragon's name.

 

Ahh...I see. Headcanon to save the day, then. I'm kind of relieved, in a weird way, to know I wasn't the only one who tripped over the bizarre "suddenly we know this now and we *totally always did*" infodump. At least I didn't forget/miss something stupidly obvious, as I usually do...this is why I write down the dialogue/events of what happens in-game: everything tends to go by in a blur, and I want to remember what actually happened. Thanks for answering, this was really bothering me. :)

 

[Hannelore.8153]

(Spoilers) If you think that's a bombshell, what if i told you that someone on YouTube predicted the entire Mordremoth storyline years before it happened, right down to the Sylvari corruption and their origins, all based upon the Subject Alpha hint.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> (Spoilers) If you think that's a bombshell, what if i told you that someone on YouTube predicted the entire Mordremoth storyline years before it happened, right down to the Sylvari corruption and their origins, all based upon the Subject Alpha hint.

 

A lot of people speculated about that and ended up right, though they got to the right conclusion for the wrong reasoning. It wasn't just the skill name, but mainly the "immune to corruption" thing that most people focused on - and that's not relevant at all, it turned out, as that "immunity" (if you can call it that) comes from something else entirely.