Ley-Line Core Details [Daybreak Spoilers]

https://imgur.com/ZYDZD6X

Assuming a 1:1 date conversion from Gregorian to Mouvelian (which isn't necessarily true anymore, but we'll assume that it is for the sake of argument), I believe this would give us the earliest date for Joko's partnership with the Inquest, or at the very least, tell us when the device was brought online. My math skills are far from perfect, but I believe this gives us the date of December 06, 2009 or 70 Season of the Colossus, 1322. To add some context to this date, Kralkatorrik flew south two years before that and presumably created the Dragonbrand running all the way through the desert and reaching into Vabbi. It's possible that the Inquest followed the trail south shortly after and encountered Joko's kingdom at that point, but the evidence for that theory is purely circumstantial.

What this could also mean is that Joko's invasion plans for Tyria began as late as 1322, or nearly 8 years ago. He might have learned from the Inquest that asura gates exist at that point and collaborated with them to achieve world domination using his armies and their technology combined. Again, these are just my early hypotheses but the date given by the ley-line core supports my theory that their partnership has been going on for nearly a decade at the very least. If Joko hadn't turned on the Inquest, this might have meant a joint campaign for world domination combining the best technology Tyria has ever seen with a massive and efficient army. With 8 years to prepare for this invasion and no one from the northern continent aware of this collaboration between asura and Awakened, he could have taken Divinity's Reach by blitzkrieg and hit all the other capital cities in turn until he conquered them all. Ironically, Balthazar slowed him down and dragged Dragon's Watch into Elona, revealing Joko's plan before he had a chance to launch his invasion.

I just finished the instance, and I saw no evidence that the inquest where actually collaborating with Joko at any point. Seemed more of a typical secret Inquest base that Joko discovered and overran.

Wait, so you're admitting that Palawa Joko might actually have been a genuine threat to Tyria without provocation? Who are you and what did you do with Athrenn?

That said, Crinn's observation is on point - we don't know if it was collaboration or whether the Inquest were trying to avoid Joko's notice. Obviously he found them out in the end, and it could have started as a collaboration, but it could also have been just as one of the characters supposed: Joko found an Inquest agent, killed, Awakened, and interrogated said agent, and got what he needed to know that way. All of the Inquest we saw did appear to be Awakened.

Other dialogue in the instance indicates that being able to open portals without a receiving gate is likely a recent development, coming from Zinn's data in Rata Novus and Draconis Mons.

That said, with regard to the dates: Unless the console's clock is wrong, it probably is reasonable to say that your calculation is accurate to within a month or so. I don't think it's necessarily a 1:1 conversion any more... but I suspect it still is unless there's good reason for there to be otherwise. Certainly, we can probably say with a high degree of confidence that the "present" date in Tyria is somewhere in the Season of the Colossus in 1330AE (namely, after Halloween, but before Wintersday).

Like I've said before, I'm always willing to reconsider my points if the evidence is there, and in this case, it does seem like we've caught him red-handed. The chorus of inquest zombies claiming that the war was an act of retaliation against the Commander seems like a thin facade to justify his invasion of the northern continent when we can see that he's been building up to this invasion for years. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

And it could have been a coincidence, but I believe someone mentioned Zinn's creations being used in the past in a failed assassination attempt against certain world leaders and Joko being involved somehow? If that's true then I think there's something poetic about the Inquest, those who consider themselves to be Zinn's spiritual successors, being duped a few hundred years later into helping Joko with an even more massive invasion of Tyria.

The Inquest are after one and only one thing: power, at any cost.

While the Inquest might have followed Kralkatorrik south, that doesn't explain how they found out about Farahnur, nor why it was valuable to them. They might have collaborated with Joko for promises of power but still it doesn't explain why they would go to the effort of building a full blown lab there; also knowing the Inquest they would have been extremely reluctant to consider Joko an equal collaborator as he is not an asura.

I think a better explanation is that Farahnur showed up on their map as a source of ley magic and this first attracted Zinn and later the Inquest. The fact that the core is blatantly labeled "ley-line core" confirms this, as there would really be no other reason for the Inquest to be interested. It is possible that when Kralkatorrik flew by, it greatly intensified Farahnur's magical readings via relevant ley lines, compelling the Inquest discovery. And like Canach said, Joko probably found out via Awakening a stray Inquest, then as the player character was trying to escape the Great Hall, Joko was raiding the Inquest lab and sending out the Awakened.

However he probably doesn't know that the Pact has already slain an Elder Dragon with the same powers as his.

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. One obvious perk is that research ethics are lax in Joko's empire, he has loads of money and may have been willing to fund a large-scale project.

@Athrenn.9468 said:

And it could have been a coincidence, but I believe someone mentioned Zinn's creations being used in the past in a failed assassination attempt against certain world leaders and Joko being involved somehow? If that's true then I think there's something poetic about the Inquest, those who consider themselves to be Zinn's spiritual successors, being duped a few hundred years later into helping Joko with an even more massive invasion of Tyria.

Oh, yeah, I'd actually forgotten that, but there was something - in Episode 5, I think? - that implied that Joko was the 'mysterious stranger'. Not 100% conclusive, IIRC (haven't been able to relocate the source quickly), but certainly suggestive. (Gotta admit, though, that feels a bit like back-fill for something that was originally intended to be something else: apart from the attempt on Kisu, the targets didn't really seem as if they were making the subjects more ripe for conquest: taking Salma out before the War in Kryta, for instance, might actually have made Kryta harder to conquer by allowing the White Mantle to tighten their grasp. It's possible that Joko had an arrangement with the mursaat, though...)

@"Mephu Tahm Jr.1962" said:The Inquest are after one and only one thing: power, at any cost.

While the Inquest might have followed Kralkatorrik south, that doesn't explain how they found out about Farahnur, nor why it was valuable to them. They might have collaborated with Joko for promises of power but still it doesn't explain why they would go to the effort of building a full blown lab there; also knowing the Inquest they would have been extremely reluctant to consider Joko an equal collaborator as he is not an asura.

I think a better explanation is that Farahnur showed up on their map as a source of ley magic and this first attracted Zinn and later the Inquest. The fact that the core is blatantly labeled "ley-line core" confirms this, as there would really be no other reason for the Inquest to be interested. It is possible that when Kralkatorrik flew by, it greatly intensified Farahnur's magical readings via relevant ley lines, compelling the Inquest discovery. And like Canach said, Joko probably found out via Awakening a stray Inquest, then as the player character was trying to escape the Great Hall, Joko was raiding the Inquest lab and sending out the Awakened.

However he probably doesn't know that the Pact has already slain an Elder Dragon with the same powers as his.

If you check out the school in Vabbi, Joko certainly knows about the Elder Dragons that were killed - in fact, he appears to be well informed about how they died, or at least how they died physically in the case of Mordremoth (while he claims the credit, it's likely that he knows the truth). However, Joko probably thinks he's smarter than Zhaitan... and to give him his due, he's probably right.

Regarding Fahrunar: Fahrunar is practically the Arah of Elona. Okay, it's not AS significant, but it was the site of the Apocrypha as well as the Scarab Plague, each of which would potentially interest the Inquest, and simply being a pre-Exodus human capital in and of itself raises the possibility that it might contain further interesting artifacts and/or have something significant about the location itself. So I would certainly consider it to be the sort of location that the Inquest would be interested in.

@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. One obvious perk is that research ethics are lax in Joko's empire, he has loads of money and may have been willing to fund a large-scale project.

Yeah, the Inquest have shown that they're willing to collaborate, as long as they think they're getting a net profit from the deal. (It is worth noting, however, that the Inquest were possibly the only organisation that fell under Scarlet's influence that worked itself back out again.)

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.

@Crinn.7864 said:I just finished the instance, and I saw no evidence that the inquest where actually collaborating with Joko at any point. Seemed more of a typical secret Inquest base that Joko discovered and overran.

Pretty much my thoughts as well since when you die to Joko's forces, you are forced to join up. Naturally the Inquest became over whelmed, that's why when you're trapped in a court yard - all you see is a bunch of inquest corpses. I very much doubt the Inquest is in leagues with Joko, at least not right now for the time being. I don't think Joko gave the leader of the Inquest any offers; it's more like he ceasing an opportunity.

@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.

It's possible? The Scarab Plague, from what we were able to find out about it in Nightfall, appears to be a natural occurrence: eggs from a particular species of scarab managed to get into the grain and, when eaten, survived the digestion process, hatched inside people, and ate them from the inside out. Joko would probably be quite interested in identifying the specific species so he could repeat it.

Mind you, note that "appears to be": the scarab eggs responsible could have been deliberately introduced by someone the first time. Possibly even Joko himself - undead insects have been part of the necromancer's toolkit throughout the life of Guild Wars, and if the scarabs were undead it might explain how they apparently "survived" being eaten, and likely cooked and milled as well.

Just played through the instance, and a couple relevant points that haven't been brought up yet:

*One of the characters, I believe Canach or Rytlock, identifies the tech as Rata Novan, meaning the original lab was built by either Zinn or another survivor of the Rata Novan krewe. They also speculate that that's what drew the Inquest here. That being the case, I'm willing to bet that the portal advancements came from the Fahranur lab, instead of just happening to have been discovered from Draconis Mons and getting transplanted to an even more remote facility.

*The recording indicates that Joko, or the Mysterious Figure, whichever it was that had Taimi, needed Taimi to get past the false wall. I feel that makes it more likely that the Awakened had just gained access and overrun this place before we arrived, but it isn't conclusive.

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Athrenn.9468 said:

And it

could

have been a coincidence, but I believe someone mentioned Zinn's creations being used in the past in a failed assassination attempt against certain world leaders and Joko being involved somehow? If that's true then I think there's something poetic about the Inquest, those who consider themselves to be Zinn's spiritual successors, being duped a few hundred years later into helping Joko with an even more massive invasion of Tyria.

It was the Zinn recordings. He mentions that the lowest point of his life before the fall of Rata Novus was being tricked by Joko. At the time, we assumed that it was referring to the assassin golems because there didn't seem to be any other possible occasions for them to interact.

Now, though, knowing that Zinn may have been in Fahranur at some point before his death...

@draxynnic.3719

I found that source you were looking for from Episode 5. It was in one of Zinn's voice recordings. (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zinn%27s_Recorder). All he really said was this:

Zinn: "If getting tricked by Joko was the low point of my career, this will be the high point. I am ecstatic!"

So I suppose that confirms it. Zinn admits that he was tricked by Joko into doing something, probably referring to the incident with the golems.

Edit: Huh... Aaron makes a good point.

@Athrenn.9468 said:Like I've said before, I'm always willing to reconsider my points if the evidence is there, and in this case, it does seem like we've caught him red-handed. The chorus of inquest zombies claiming that the war was an act of retaliation against the Commander seems like a thin facade to justify his invasion of the northern continent when we can see that he's been building up to this invasion for years. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

And it could have been a coincidence, but I believe someone mentioned Zinn's creations being used in the past in a failed assassination attempt against certain world leaders and Joko being involved somehow? If that's true then I think there's something poetic about the Inquest, those who consider themselves to be Zinn's spiritual successors, being duped a few hundred years later into helping Joko with an even more massive invasion of Tyria.

Retaliation for what? Something to keep in mind; we don't see Joko and that mysterious figure that we see very briefly is definitely not Joko unless he suddenly decided he didn't like his old body (for a megalomaniac I doubt he'd even consider it). We also had a ton of statements by our own character that Joko was left in the Domain of the Lost so I really feel like ANET is trying to tell us it isn't Joko.

My opinion is that this is someone we trod upon earlier in the PoF campaign on our way to balthazar. The question is; who would that be, who would have enough power to command Joko's legions and pretend to be Joko himself?

@UnbentMars.9126 said:

Retaliation for what? Something to keep in mind; we don't see Joko and that mysterious figure that we see very briefly is definitely not Joko unless he suddenly decided he didn't like his old body (for a megalomaniac I doubt he'd even consider it). We also had a ton of statements by our own character that Joko was left in the Domain of the Lost so I really feel like ANET is trying to tell us it isn't Joko.

Alternatively, our quest log states several times that Joko is indeed back. If ANet was trying to hint that he wasn't, why would they do that, in a record most people never bother to read?

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@UnbentMars.9126 said:

Retaliation for what? Something to keep in mind; we don't see Joko and that mysterious figure that we see very briefly is definitely not Joko unless he suddenly decided he didn't like his old body (for a megalomaniac I doubt he'd even consider it). We also had a ton of statements by our own character that Joko was left in the Domain of the Lost so I really feel like ANET is trying to tell us it isn't Joko.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'most people would never bother to read' as it's kind of hard to avoid. It's stated at multiple points by your own character at several places within the story.

In regards to why ANET was trying to hint that he wasn't;1: because they've done it before (Fake Lazarus? Or did you already forget? The 'quest log' also stated Lazarus was back several times before it was revealed it wasn't him)2: because red-herrings in stories are common and useful3: because the Mysterious Figure appears at several points and never shows up named Palawa Joko. If they were truly bringing Palawa Joko back right now and were flat out stating it, why wouldn't they just outright name him?

@UnbentMars.9126 said:

3: because the Mysterious Figure appears at several points and never shows up named Palawa Joko. If they were truly bringing Palawa Joko back right now and were flat out stating it, why wouldn't they just outright name him?

Because Joko is back and the Mysterious Figure isn't Joko?

As for the rest: red herrings are useful when used sparingly. Used too often... especially, say, right after another villain who pulled the exact same trick and sparked a vitriolic uproar... then they start looking a lot less useful.

But my point is that the only thing we're working off here, the only reason we think might not be back, is A.) we don't see him personally, and B.) our characters voices doubts. But, by the time our character gets around to writing in their little journal, they no longer doubt; and while we don't see Joko, Taimi does, and confirms that he was the one who took her. Sure, she's never been in the room with him before, but I'd like to think that she wouldn't mistake a clearly female stranger for being him.

That leaves our only reason for believing Joko is being impersonated as 'because it's possible'. That's not a very attractive premise to base an argument on.

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.

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@UnbentMars.9126 said:

3: because the Mysterious Figure appears at several points and never shows up named Palawa Joko. If they were truly bringing Palawa Joko back right now and were flat out stating it, why wouldn't they just outright name him?

"Because Joko is back and the Mysterious Figure isn't Joko?" Yes, that's my point, why would they make Joko out to be the enemy, make a big deal out of him being left in the domain of the lost so he shouldnt be ABLE to be back, and then never show him if he actually is back?

"by the time our character gets around to writing in their little journal, they no longer doubt" because we've never ever ever been wrong before, ever.When did Taimi confirm it was Palawa Joko?

"That leaves our only reason for believing Joko is being impersonated as 'because it's possible'" today I learned being suspicious and not immediately believing in something means I believe the opposite. Cool. Also, today I learned a premise has to be attractive to be worthy of consideration. Double cool.

Should a story element ever be inherently unattractive to the audience? Part of being a good writer is knowing what your audience wants and delivering it consistently. If a concept is so unappealing that people would be disappointed by the ending then why would a writer want to include that in their story? I didn't like the way the identity reveal was handled in Season 3 and others seemed to share the opinion. I don't think another villain swap would go over well with the fans.

I didn't see this thread before posting my other one. My bad.

The mysterious figure is definitely not Joko. The vision we receive from Aurene implies that it's someone with Palawa Joko's Scepter controlling his armies.

@Athrenn.9468 said:Should a story element ever be inherently unattractive to the audience? Part of being a good writer is knowing what your audience wants and delivering it consistently. If a concept is so unappealing that people would be disappointed by the ending then why would a writer want to include that in their story? I didn't like the way the identity reveal was handled in Season 3 and others seemed to share the opinion. I don't think another villain swap would go over well with the fans.

The issue people had was that it felt too abrupt and didn't seem like it made sense, not that people had an issue with a false-identify in the first place. If this is a false-identity case in a similar way and is handled properly, people won't have an issue.

Example; if it turns out its Lyssa (which would help explain why Balthazar didn't curse Lyssa as many people have conjectured about), it absolutely fits her character, her methods, and the plot for her to pretend to be someone else.

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.

@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?

All we've been shown so far is a vision of a woman holding a Mordant Crosier which may or may not be Joko's scepter but probably is. She has glowing eyes and looks Awakened. I don't think that tells us much, except that she's going to have an important role to play in the story.

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?