Please explain a plot point to me.
Veprovina.4876
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In the Draconis Mons part of the LW3 story, when you're collecting druid shields to go into the volcano where Balthazar and Primordus are, Taimi calls you and says something about how she was wrong, doomed everyone, horrible stuff will happen, then you go to the shore so she can show you and an animation plays.
There's some swirling balls, two of them shoot lazers at each other and disappear.
After the animation, the commander is like:
"No, it can't be..."
"But this means..."
And Taimi is like:
"Yes, exactly, and it's all my fault..."
Like, what the hell is anyone talking about? What will happen? What did Balthazar do? What will happen if he does the thing to Primordus?
What even is going on?
Did this really need to be so obtuse? I feel like an idiot when my characters are all agreeing in half sentences and know more than i do.
Wasn't that animation supposed to explain to me what is going on and not raise more questions? Especially since my character already knows what that meant.
Can someone explain that part to me?
Comments
I'm not a genius in GW lore but:
If Balthy kills Primordous, the magic released upon its demise will be catastrophic and chaotic.
This is the case with all Elder Dragons and gods upon their fall.
The magic released either goes big boom like in the Desolation (The huge blackened hole in Crystal Desert) or gets absorbed by other dormant Elder Dragons (like when Zhaitan died and Modremoth, Jormag and Primordous nom nom nommed the energy)
If I play a stupid build, I deserve to die.
If I beat people on a stupid build, I deserve to get away with it.
What's being referenced in that LS chapter is what known as "The All". https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_All
What's basically being described is that the Elder Dragons are a necessary and vital part of the mechanism of Tyria's very existence. By killing the Elder Dragons we're risking the destruction of Tyria itself, we're currently at the point that if one more dies its game over. Balthazar knew this but didn't give a kitten and tried to kill Jormag and Primordus anyway, though as you hopefully already know failed, only managing to take a bit of power from each and then caused both of them to go back into a dormant state (which becomes much more important later).
Hate Is Fuel.
As others have pointed out, Taimi's machine produced a simulation indicating that, when Jormag and Primordus clash to the death, the fallout would cause an explosion. This seems to be the first time that Taimi truly becomes aware that the death of an Elder Dragon can cause an explosion, so too the PC. Prior to this, the only other way that we could infer this is from the Thaumanova Reactor disaster and, given the PC's remarks to Taimi during Season 3, it seems that any lessons that the PC might have learned from Thaumanova, weren't. Like Taimi, he/she seems to realise the dangers of the wrong dragon(s) fighting and or dying from Taimi's machine.
What are we to make of Taimi's simulation? Well, I think that it was slightly incorrect. Yes, an Elder Dragon's death can cause an explosion. But not Primordus's or Jormag's. They can safely duke it out and, whatever should happen to Tyria as a result, it won't be so disastrous as to threaten the perpetuality of terrestrial life. (Balthazar turned the two dragons' energies against each other and it didn't destroy Thyria. Each dragon simply withdrew, indicating that they balance each other out.) Thus, the machine needed to be recalibrated, pitting any one of the Terrestrial Elder Dragons (TED) against the Deep Sea Dragon (DSD). Should a TED face the DSD, Taimi's fears might truly be realized: If the DSD dies, or the DSD is pitted against the wrong TED, Thyria will explode.
This is all just my opinion, of course. As I see it, Balthazar understood that killing the TEDs wouldn't prove fatal to terrestrial life. His strategy against the DSD would probably have involved trying to put it back to sleep, or even replacing it with Aurene; a plan that Jormag may now be adopting in Balthazar's stead.
Want to delve into some theories about the lore and story of GW2? Check these posts out: The Search For Answers P1 and The Search For Answers P2.
It's a pretty confusing subject as we still don't fully understand it yet but as others have said i'll also try to explain it as best I can.
This representation you are seeing with the orbs is known as The All, it's a symbolic representation of Tyria and the balance of magic in the world.
The orb in the middle is believed to specifically represent Tyria itself while the coloured orbs that are forever circling it each represent one of the Elder Dragons.
It's said that each of the Elder Dragons is constantly in a tug of war like situation with the world's magic which create's a balance between them and Tyria, this we can verify in the world with the Elder Dragons hording and consuming as much magic as they can during each of the Dragon cycles before they go back into a dormant state and the magic slowly seeps back into the world from their bodies eventually waking them up again to repeat the process.
As we learned back in season 2 when entering Omadd's machine, we saw in a vision of The All that killing Zhaitan had upset this balance.. and we upset it even more when we killed Mordremoth later on in HoT thus causing Primordus to move from the far shiverpeaks down to the fire island chain to consume the massive amount of magic that had been unleashed by Zhaitan and Mordremoth's deaths.
This is the point where Season 3 comes into play with Balthazar coming back to Tyria with the goal of eradicating the remaining Elder Dragons.
After learning about Taimi's machine and that it can focus Primordus and Jormag's powers against one another to kill them both, Balthazar decides to steal the machine and use it to destroy both dragons.. fully aware that the damage this would do to Tyria would be catastrophic if not outright destroy the world entirely.
This event is what you are specifically seeing in the cutscene you are referring too.
The Orange and Blue orbs that represent Primordus and Jormag clash together and destroy each other which causes The All to destabilise and the central orb (Tyria) to explode.. this we interpret as the end of the world and why we then decide to stop Balthazar from killing any more Elder Dragons while also re-evaluating our own agenda as well since we now know that we cannot simply keep killing them as we have been doing up until this point without further destabilising the balance of magic and risking the destruction of the world.
The machine was designed to kill both dragons with each other's opposing energies. She realises too late that it'll do that with devastating consequences to the World. Balthazar stole the machine and nearly killed them both in trying to absorb their magic, but we interrupted it before they could be destroyed and ended up sending both to sleep.
Taimi blames herself for introducing/adapting the machine in the first place
It all goes a bit wonky in Season 5 though
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
to be more clear, the writers make that part if everyone already played 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝟮, those not, have a impression that all this come from nowhere.
main pvp: Khel the Undead(power reaper).
Thank you so much everyone!
It makes more sense now, i understand the plot better.
Still think they should have referenced at least some of it in the game, like, my character would say "the all" or something, and i could look it up. With the half sentences they said, i had nothing to cling to for information. Weird writing... Up to that point, i was understanding the story, but this just threw me for a loop.
Like, i assumed the two globes destroying each other were Primordus and Jormag, since that was the plan all along, but i had no context to what the whole "picture" is, so i couldn't draw any conclusions. Plus, it's annoying when the characters know more than the player.
I'm at Siren's Landing now, searching for Balzhazar, but i kind of guess how this ends since i played Path of Fire.
Season 4 next! And eventually Season 2 when i buy it.
Yes, this is the only Season i have yet to play. I know it was a bit out of order (a bit lol), but i got LS3 before 2 for ascended trinkets. I needed them for my WvW build.
So yeah, if this is all explained in LS2, then i completely missed it.
Again, thank you all for the detailed explanations! Much appreciated!
Yes. She discovered that killing an Elder Dragon puts the Eternal Alchemy (i.e., the world/solar system/galaxy) into an imbalance. The more we kill, the worse the situation gets, until the system becomes so unstable that it collapses and Tyria ceases to exist.
That's basically Magic, the power that holds the world together - Asura call it the Eternal Alchemy. Every color represents one power held by an Elder Dragon. It's what Tyria's magic is made of:
Nowadays, I assume the center is being represented by the new Elder Dragon, Aurene, who is responsible for maintaining the balance.
Balthazar tried to suck the magic out of Primordus to absorb it for himself and become the mightiest of all the Gods. He used Omadd's Machine for this purpose, which he stole from us (it's the same machine that drove Scarlet crazy when she gazed into the very essence of existence):
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Omadd's_Machine
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scarlet_Briar
♀ Gallery: Guild Wars 1 Memories
No more LW episodes, only Expansions and Side Stories, please!
Ah, so that's what eternal alchemy is. Thanks!
Why is there a question mark on Mordremoth? Didn't we kill him in HoT?
I made that image a long time ago, so...
♀ Gallery: Guild Wars 1 Memories
No more LW episodes, only Expansions and Side Stories, please!
Also back then, there was a little uncertainty about which spheres referred to which dragon. They don't have handy labels in the LS2 cutscene as they do in Ashantara's annotated image
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:The_All_(The_Machine).jpg
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
For context of what the cinematic shows, refer back to Season 2's story instance The Machine, there was a cinematic featuring The All, and The All has been referenced a handful of times since.
For fast rewatch reference, here's Flashpoint's cinematic
This simulation is depicting The All, and what would happen should Taimi's Machine, which Balthazar stole at the beginning of that episode, get turned on. Energies from Jormag and Primordus (represented by the orbs) will assault each other. If you note, in the background Zhaitan's and Mordremoth's orbs are dim and drifting, while Kralkatorrik's and the DSD's are just as bright as Jormag's and Primordus' orbs are (and mobile too). Should Taimi's Machine get used the the dragons killed by each others' magic, there will be an explosion, and the central orb (the world of Tyria) will die, as the entire system of The All becomes unstable (depicted by the central orb glowing and the rings throughout (and the other orbs) moving erratically until the whole thing explodes).
They're speaking in half-sentences because the context was provided throughout the season. This was the big culmination episode, so it can't really be done out of context.
All these squares make a circle.
All these squares make a circle.
All these squares make a circle.
Well, they reference Omadd's Machine throughout the season, which has a singular link to The All from Season 2. That link was supposed to be the prompting rather than saying The All. For example:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eyes_on_Lake_Doric
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Taimi's_Pet_Project
Nooot quite. That's The All. The All is the interworking magic system for Tyria (world).
Eternal Alchemy is a philosophical belief about the interworking and connections of all things in the multiverse.
The All is basically the magic equivalent of Earth's wind currents + magnetic poles, etc. Whereas Eternal Alchemy is the equivalent of astronomy+religion.
Though NPCs in Season 1 and 2 do equate the two, and sadly so does Taimi in Season 3 as per above, this is a false equivalent. Still, it's a false equivalent used consistently so the context is there in the words.
All these squares make a circle.
All these squares make a circle.
All these squares make a circle.