Reblogged spacetrashpile
Insert caption here.
Reblogged taikeero-gw2
dont play with me like this tree man
live emdash reaction from back when I first played the personal story in 2018
Literally Aurene gw2 no one is doing it like you. God. Sacrificial lamb who desperately wants to have a family but instead is forced to watch (forced to help) that family get systematically murdered one after another after another. She was scared, she was strong. She was nobody’s pet. She was a tool for an end. Precious, precocious Aurene. So loved and so so tragic.
**grabs her and runs**
SHURTHEFUCKUP SHES FOREVER IN MY SOUL
Reblogged moth-tea-merchant
do you ever draw things that you’re not quite sure why you did it but you drew it anyways and now you cant take it back
OoooOoo shit whaddup
Guild Wars 2 Heritage Post
Reblogged flower-crow
Reblogged mistreaders-requiem
trahearne has literally never read as a 25 year old to me. and i guess in the context of sylvari he WAS literally the oldest dude of the species at the time so interpretation can kind of go both ways but outside of that he's always been the burdened-by-his-past-failings 40-something year old in my mind. young scholar with a nigh insurmountable destiny? no. that's the melancholic middle-aged former hero whose help we need to put together a team for one last ride.
Reblogged commander-frostfang
Consider: a sylvari commander ensuring Aurene gets a childhood bc they never really got one.
Reblogged
Loreposting about Abaddon
Abaddon doesn’t get a lot of attention. As a deposed god he doesn’t seem relevant to the Guild Wars timeline after Nightfall. But I keep thinking about him because Abaddon is probably the most influential character Tyria ever had.
Let’s just go over where he appears in-game if you start off in GW2. Everyone knows the six human gods. They’re in statues, temples, personal shrines everywhere. The base game story makes you detour through a sunken temple dedicated to Abaddon, while the Orrian temples to the other five gods are still intact on the surface. This is not by chance. It’s also nudging you to notice that there are no Orrian temples to Kormir, because she replaced Abaddon only two centuries ago. This is reflected again later on in Siren’s Landing on the other side of Orr, where the Five, and Abaddon, each have a personal reliquary, and Abaddon’s is central, connected to all the others, and still intact.
Building on that refresher on human divinity, in Path of Fire you visit the actual place Abaddon was defeated by the other Five gods and pushed into a side dimension to keep him out of the world.
And when you visit the archives of the Durmand Priory, they have an imposing Abaddon statue towering over the stairs. Other than being reflected in three major environments, he doesn’t have a role in the plot. BUT.
As Kormir explains to you, the weakness of the human gods is that their excess of power keeps fucking up the world. The Desolation, a map that covers only a part of the sulfur desert, is completely uninhabitable because Abaddon was destroyed there. This happened because Abaddon, who was actually the most powerful of the Six and the leader of the group, wanted humans to share in the gift of magic. He was the god of knowledge, after all. This proved disastrous and the other gods reduced and compartmentalised the magic, and Abaddon went on a whole attempt to overthrow them and become one, single god of all.
The destruction of Abaddon’s temples and relics was intentional. He was wiped from memory. The pantheon was called The Five until Nightfall, wherein the existence of Abaddon was revealed as he tried to drag himself back into the mortal plane. As a god his spheres of power were water and knowledge. Erasing knowledge of him was what made him powerless. (Interestingly, the Priory’s special collections contains the Scroll of the Five True Gods, an ancient record of what the human gods knew about the Elder Dragons, but one dragon is missing - the water dragon, who like Abaddon, has a damaged and erased history. The six Elder Dragons and six human gods have many respective connections.)
When he lived, Abaddon’s followers were the Margonites, who believed him the only real god and worshipped him exclusively, unlike other humans who revere all the Six together. They were rewarded with transformation into etheral beings with an extremely long lifespan, and were imprisoned in Abaddon’s Realm, the Realm of Torment, when he was forced out of Tyria. As the god of knowledge he had a realm to himself, and when fallen, his sphere inversed. Knowledge became madness, the theme his realm embodies. Temples were sunk, records destroyed, because to remove all knowledge of the god of knowledge made him powerless.
I can’t remember where, but it’s implied that by Nightfall comes around a thousand years after his banishment, Abaddon is finally able to claw his way back into Tyria because people are starting to remember him. There’s one side quest that sticks out in my memory called The Search for Enlightenment about a scholar stealing scriptures from an Elonian library which leads to a massive raid by Margonites. The scholar was ‘babbling’ about a forgotten god. Proximity to knowledge about Abaddon seems to bestow insanity, the connection between Abaddon in his inverted realm and his hold over anyone who knows he exists. Though the Five Gods tried, they didn’t erase everything (hell, Trahearne and Sayeh al’ Rajihd give you a guided tour of an Abaddon temple). Over a thousand years, relics popped up and people began to remember The Five was once The Six. As they did his influence returned until he was able to attempt to merge the Realm of Torment with Tyria and become a single, all powerful god in the absence of the others.
But wait how does that make a forgotten god the most influential character in both games?
Well.
Guild Wars lore is nothing if not completely linked together. Every single thing has cause and effect, every event is a domino. The story is consistent from Prophecies to this day. So let’s start with the first GW1 chapter, Prophecies.
It all starts at the Citadel of Flame.
It was built into the volcano Hrangmer. The charr had been displaced, pushed out of Ascalon by the successful expansion of humankind. 450 years before GW2 the Flame Legion found this volcano and, inside, Titans. You know how Mordremoth’s minions are Mordrem, Zhaitan’s minions are Risen, etc? Titans are Abaddon minions, left behind and hidden after his defeat. They change their appearance to suit their environment. In a jungle they’re vegetative, in mountains they’re made of ice, in the Realm of Torment they’re twisted constructs of flesh, in a volcano, they’re fire. The Flame Legion brings the Titans back to the charr, charr worship them, and in exchange, get immense fire powers. Flame Legion completely takes over charr society and makes it a theistic, misogynist nightmare with the Shamans at the top.
Abaddon has just restructured charr society.
Using their overpowered fire magic indirectly from a human god, charr, ironically, rally against the humans and nuke Ascalon to pieces. The few survivors escape to Kryta. Charr are now pretty much unstoppable and invade all the way to Orr. Vizier Khilbron used a powerful stolen scroll to repel the charr with magic, and it completely destroys Orr, collapsing the island into the ocean.
Abaddon has just wiped out two nations of the humans who used to worship him, with Orr as the final goal - to tear down the resplendent city of the Gods who betrayed him. This is referenced, if you know what you’re looking for, in GW2. You can scale the Vizier’s Tower, where he read the scroll that sank all of Orr, and on the wall…
A mural to the lost god, a testament to power that, a thousand years later, one who was expunged from history had a faithful likeness depicted.
Ascalon’s a burning hole and Orr is underwater. Now what? Those Ascalonian survivors in Kryta find the place is controlled by White Mantle. The White Mantle are committing mass murder via bloodstone sacrifice (bloodstones being the power curb the gods introduced after imbuing humans with magic) in order to halt the prophecy of a Chosen One opening the Door of Komalie. Vizier Khilbron turns up, shaking out some mysteriously wet boots don’t worry about that, and leads you against these genocidal cultists. Which, whoops, does lead to the Door of Komalie being opened - and it’s a doorway into Abbadon’s Realm of Torment, out of which Titans power through. This was the apocalypse planned for Kryta. Unlike the first two, this one is thwarted by the player. Kryta lives on. Vizier Khilbron is the final boss and turns out to have been a lich.
That’s 3 of the 5 human nations. What about Cantha and Elona?
GW: Factions is the Canthan chapter in which Shiro Tagachi, the emperor’s bodyguard, continually visits a fortune teller until she inflicts such paranoia on his mindset that he believes he needs to kill the emperor in self-defense. His defeat causes the Jade Wind that creates the Jade Sea. As a spirit, Shiro then engulfs Cantha in a plague that warps people into tumorous mutants. The fortune teller turns out to be an Abaddon minion whose task was the eventual destruction of Cantha. This one also is foiled by the player.
GW: Nightfall is the culmination chapter. Abaddon is now powerful enough, well known enough, to breach Tyria and try to come back. His agent is Varesh Ossa, who slowly transforms into a Margonite over the course of the game. The player confronts the breach between planes and finally enters the Realm of Torment, meeting the shades of Abaddon’s servants that came before, the lich form of Vizier Khilbron, and the spirit of Shiro Tagachi, before facing Abaddon himself.
And that’s the end of it. In Guild Wars magic cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, so another god ascends in Abaddon’s place. They are once again The Six.
It’s Abaddon that ruined half the Elonian desert, Abaddon whose sinking of Orr gave Zhaitan the perfect mass grave to necromance, Abaddon who froze the Cantha sea into solid jade, and Abaddon whose final death and eruption of magic started waking Primordus, leading to the norn, dwarf and asuran alliance to stop it in 1078 AE– introducing the norn and asura to the rest of Tyria, and making the dwarves extinct, cutting their entire race’s existence short. If it wasn’t for Abaddon, the charr wouldn’t have been taken over by their magic-toting shaman caste, only to come to their senses and rebel and ostracize the Flame Legion afterward. Hell, the current Flame Legion Imperators STILL style their horns in an homage to Abaddon, and probably don’t even remember why! To a human god, gone for over a thousand years, who used their race as pawns in a revenge attempt at wiping out every nation the humans had built!
And even after being thoroughly and completely destroyed, his magic STILL haunts Tyria enough for his statues to punish you for not showing the proper respect.
Reblogged legendary-assassin-stance
playing gw2 is like. did you know many of the main characters have introductory short stories you can read online from ten years ago. did you know they make cute episode trailers for youtube and one of them is a mission impossible parody and one of them is the most heartwrenching scene acting in a video game, but it's. it's on youtube.
did you know there's short stories on their website about caithe finding herself after heartbreak, and zafirah coming to terms with misguided faith, and rytlock finally understanding his inferiority complex and the crutch he's used to overcome it at the expense of people he should've been there for. no it's not in the game it's on their website
there are official interviews with most of their voice actors discussing how they approach the character and the emotion they put into it and how they've developed over a decade
there's an alt goth version of the main sylvari theme that literally everyone swears by and it's really goddamn great but someone has to tell you where it is
don't even get me started on abaddon, one of the most important characters in their world, who isn't in the game and is barely mentioned
this is now a Found Content post
Introductory Character Stories
- Rox's Tale
- Braham's Story
- Welcome to Paradise (Kasmeer)
- Canach's Story: An After-Hours Meeting
- Marjory's Story: The Last Straw
- The Trek of the Zephyrites
- Delegation (Rox)
- What Scarlet Saw
Unique Trailers
- Bug in the System (heist movie parody)
- War Eternal Season 4 Finale (single shot rendered scene)
- EoD Expansion trailer with Joon, Mai Trin and Ankka
- Animated EoD trailer with Rama and Yao
All or Nothing: Requiem
Behind the Voice (Actor Interviews)
Kari Wahlgren // Lex Lang // Matt Mercer // Misty Lee // Steve Blum // Yuri Lowenthal // Debi Derryberry // Ike Amadi // Tommie Earl Jenkins // Jocelyn Blue // Nolan North // Courtenay Taylor // Sam Riegel // Mara Junot
Fear Not This Night Theme
I can't point towards anything specific about Abaddon's role in the story except that I wrote a big post about it a little while ago
Reblogged champion-of-aurene
Blixxie went from Good Apple to Snaff Savant. She kind of sucked at college, a lot of stuff just didn't click with her. But her entry for the Snaff Prize blew the judges away, and it made up pretty much all of her qualifying grade.
Kaidalis went from Barnstormer to Pact Commander. While she is not The Pact Commander (tm) she was a commander in the Pact. She brought a lot of combat animals into the fight. Training Sylvan Hounds and also training combat animals for the Vigil.
Khorren went from Knight of the Thorn to Valiant of the Wyld Hunt. She's been a liaison to the Pact, and to the Commander
Oxia went from Gladiator to Warband Legionnaire Oxia and her warband are actually not within the legions anymore. Having left Blood during Icebrood Saga, but it's a title she still carries. She will live and die for her warband.
And of course, Aoife. She's not getting a title change, but she will of course always be the Slayer of Issormir Aoife 1 is the Pupil of Owl, and Aoife 2 is Twice-Told Legend. Because there's 2 of her. Har har har.
And a special note for Amarilis now being the Knight of the Thorn. While she gave the broken remains of Caladbolg to Khorren, she went on the journey to get it restored with her, and Khorren felt it was best given to Amaralis as a reminder of Trahearne.
Reblogged thornethenorn
‘She wasn’t a good mother’ great are we evaluating this character trait as one of her many facets or are we just damning her for not being the most maternal womanliest woman who ever womaned
Reblogged mistfallengw2
Honestly, I'll always be a defender of the early game content. PoF/S4 are my favorites for sure, but the personal story, S2...Anet was doing something very different from what they had done previously with GW1. In a way, it was kind of growing pains.
And as far as story goes, there's so much you miss skipping that content. I've still done the personal story on any comm I plan to play through to the end because their choices are important.
Yes, even for a character like Rhenn, whose choices only become relevant after Claw Island.
It's also just a great window into how the game has developed and grown over the last 13 years, and it always gives me an appreciation of how hard the team worked early on to give us a banger experience. We only see it as clunky and awkward now because they've changed how they tell the story as much as they have.
Reblogged dalishious
samdananaman-deactivated2020112
You know what? If Cassandra can light the lyrium in people’s bodies aflame, why isn’t that one of her abilities in game? Like why mention it? It’s not even one of the tier abilities in the specializations either. I don’t know, it just bothers me a little
Reblogged dalishious
One thing Lilith wishes she could have said to any one of her companions please!
(｡✧ˬ✧｡ ) Leggo.
Lavellan + Dorian | sfw | “Better Off”
They’d spoken of so many things.
Magic, magisters, his mother—Lavellanwas full of questions and Dorian did so enjoy having someone actually showinterest in what he had to say. The shameless flirtations weren’t terrible,either. Nothing would come of it, obviously, but. It was still rather fun. Lilithtreated flirting like a sport, and Dorian was all too happy to play that game.(Also, she frequently referred to him as “babe,” and that was entirely too much fun.)
Debates were veritable events, discussions mired in playfulbanter. They spoke of many things. Dorian always enjoyed it.
They spoke of Tevinter.
She asked about slavery, and Dorian didn’t think to be wary.Lilith asked about many things.
“Did you have slaves?” she asked.
“Not personally,” he said. “But my family does, and treatsthem well. Honestly, I never thought much about it until I came South. Backhome, it’s…how it is? Slaves are everywhere. You don’t question it. I’m noteven certain many slaves do.”
She was supposed to reply with something glib. Some teasingflirtation, a playfully antagonistic remark. She was supposed to make some kindof joke. She didn’t.
The crooked line of her smile turned sharp. “How can you notquestion it?”
He frowned at the steely curtness of her voice. “In theSouth you have alienages, slums, both human and elven. The desperate have noway out. Back home, a poor man can sell himself. As a slave, he could have aposition of respect, comfort, and could even support a family. Some slaves aretreated poorly, it’s true. But do you honestly think inescapable poverty is better?”
He thought she would argue. She didn’t.
She backhanded him with a ringing slap across the face. Her eyes burned; the branching lines of hertattoos bunched in a furious scowl.
“How dare you,”she seethed. The muscles of her arms tensed, fingers curling into fists. “People,” she hissed, “are not things tobe sold.”
For a horrid flash of an instant Dorian felt the burn ofindignation rise like bile in his throat. Words spit out with the bite of aviper. “How dare I?” he scoffed, andcouldn’t dull a venomous edge. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a slave,true. I never thought about it until I saw how different it was here. But Isuspect you don’t know, either, norshould you believe that every tale of Tevinter excess is the norm.”
He thought she’d slap him again.
She didn’t.
She stared him hard in the eye, fury-frozen and unblinking;tossed back the bunched muscles of her shoulders and stood at full height. “Ilike you, Dorian,” she said. “But I need to explain something to you.”
This was never part of the game. This was not fun.
He tried not to look shaken. “Abuse heaped upon thosewithout power,” he shot back, “isn’t limited to Tevinter, my friend.”
Lavellan bit out the crisp command, “Hold your tongue,” and Dorian’s jaw sealed shut. “You need to gainsome perspective, son, and you need to do it quick.” When she stepped forwardDorian had to fight the urge to move back. “You’re going to ask me how I know? HowI’m qualified to argue?” Her voicerings clear, heavy with a millennia worth of rage. “My very heritage issaturated with the blood of those you would call ‘better off.’ These are mypeople. My history. My death. Don’tyou dare deign to tell me how mysuffering is ‘better.’”
“I-”
Oh.
Oh.
“Have you lost anyone?” she demanded. “Family? Friends?”
“I…suppose, but-”
“This is not loss,”she hissed. “This is more than loss.To be stripped of personhood is a conscious state of death, and you knownothing of death.” Her fingers curled into his robes like claws in flesh. “You know nothing of my deaths.”
He wished she would have slapped him again. When shereleased her hold on his collar it felt like being pried from a lion’s jaws.
“I like you,” she repeated, “but you will not bring thatshit into my Inquisition. You either care about people or you don’t. There isno grey. Not here. Not with me.”
Lilith couldn’t have stood more than two inches above fivefeet tall. Somehow she still loomed over him like a rolling storm.
“Poverty is not death,” she stated. “A poor man is still hisown man. A slave is a thing, and howdare you equate them. People are people. Weare not things. We will never again bethings. Never. Do you understand?”
“…yes.”
“No pity for abusers. No mercy for oppressors. And no tolerance for masters.” Thefrigid stillness of her eyes stung like ice on bare skin. “I will never be a thing. I will never be bought. Do you understand?”
“…I’m sorry.” He rarely said it and meant it so profoundly.Today was…more than rare. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
He thought to argue—thisis part of my society, part of my culture, this is a societal norm, I’ve neverbeen made to question it—but he stayed silent. It felt blasphemous not to.
“You’re a smart man,” she said. “A clever man. And if you’re conscious enough to criticize Tevinter,then you’re more than capable of knowing that a person’s life is not acommodity to be owned. People are notowned. And there is no excuse to absolve you of fault. You’re part of theproblem or you’re part of the solution. Inaction—to not think—does not make you less guilty.”
He wished she’d just slap him again.
“This conversation isn’t happening again. There are no babysteps. This isn’t a process. It’s not foodfor thought. This is inalienable truth, and there is no grey. Slavery is wrong. You are wrong. This is the end of the world as we know it, and I will notface it with someone who does not think.”Her eyes were ice, were fire, were steel. Dorian’s bones felt full of dust. “Doyou understand?”
“I do,” he said, and his voice came out subdued this time.He no longer felt like being contrary. “I…I’m sorry.”
“Then learn,” she said. “Bebetter.”
“Yes. I… I never meant it like that. I’m sorry.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder, and her fingers curled justa touch too tightly into the curve of his bones. “Learn,” she repeated. “Think.”When she finally released him and stepped back it felt like watching a greatbeast sink back into the sea. Dorian felt his resolve splinter and crack like aship lost to a storm.
The burn of Lavellan’s eyes ebbed back to placid glass, calmreturning in a flash. “We still on for drinks tonight?”
“Drinks,” he shakenly echoed. “Ah. Yes.”
“Good.” She snapped off a loose mock salute and turned toleave, divine fury seemingly contained. The rigid lines of her musclessoftened, the wrathful goddess melting back into easy smiles and clear eyes. “Later,babe.”
Dorian still felt glass in his bones.
Reblogged
ohmygodlenny-deactivated2021071
Vivienne’s comments to Adaar about Vashoth mages
If you tell Vivienne that Tal Vashoth don’t have templars she’ll claim that Tal Vashoth also sew mages’ lips shut and unlike with a Dalish elf you’re not allowed to elaborate or refute this (to any extent.)
Which is of course a missed opportunity because you could potentially have had the option to say, “Well I’ve never seen a Qunari in Circle robes” or ask her what templars do to Tal Vashoth mages (or of course say “Not in my Kith we don’t”).
And sure she probably would disapprove but like, there’s no elaboration at all. Especially because Vashoth aren’t really a distinct culture the way the Dalish are, so Adaar should at least be able to say that much. I know this is probably because Qunari were added late development but man…so disappointing.
Just worth noting, the one and only example we have of a Tal Vashoth mage being taken by templars is in Dragon Age Redemption. Saarebas (the story’s villain) was taken by the templars after the shipwreck, where they then took him to the gallows and tortured him, “examining him,” as they never had a qunari mage before, and wanted to learn about qunari magic.
So no, Adaar probably would not have been better off in the Circle. :/
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Ancient Elven "Lyrium Knights" Theory
So, I used a cheat to unlock all the codex entries in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and had a field day reading them. One of the first things I started to piece together was various mentions of "lyrium knights" used in Ancient Elvhenan to serve the Evanuris. Now, to quote Bellara, I have a theory...
This is exactly what happened to Fenris.
In the codex entry "Against the So-Called Gods", Solas writes:
They are infusing lyrium into warriors not gifted with the sense of magic. This has not been done since the Great War, when honoured knights willingly sacrificed their own flesh in defence of the people. But what enemy will the lyrium knights defend you from? The Forgotten Ones? They have fled the empire. Me? I am only a danger to the powerful. No, the lyrium knights are meant to defend against you, to stifle resistance and protect the Evanuris.
The description "infusing lyrium into warriors not gifted with the sense of magic" immediately invokes the image of the lyrium branded to Fenris. But there's more!
In the codex entry "Aftermath of Disparaging the Gods", Felassan writes:
The good news is that public sentiment has turned against the lyrium knights, and our agents got information that let us destroy one of the sarcophagi.
At the mention of sarcophagi, combined with the mention of lyrium infusion... well, anyone who has read the comics Dragon Age: Blue Wraith and Dragon Age: Dark Fortress would find that familiar. In these comics, we learn Danarius that Danarius accomplished his ritual on Fenris by uncovering an ancient elven sarcophagus that can infuse lyrium into an elf. It only works on elves, though. Any non-elf explodes.
So, yeah. Fenris is a lyrium knight.