4 questions i thought of for a while (cantha, timeline, ascension, french)

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

for a whole now i have been thinking about some things, coming down to 4 questions, now i wanting to know what your thought here is about it.

1. Ascension. In gw1 we had ascension, closer to the stars and Hunted! who all basicly had the same function ingame, but lorewise its different, now i recently saw a video that had all the nightfall cinematics . one of the lines in it , near the end is "we are all touched by abaddon, even who opposed him".Now this god me thinking, what if ascension is just being touched by the gods? Ascension in prophecies basicly is it, Closer to the Stars is it maybe in a way and with Hunted! thta happens right after you get pummeled by abaddon's demons and maybe his energy, and then purify that sanctum wich if im right has something to do with melandru, your basicly touched by the gods too , specifically Abaddon. so all 3 are all just about being touched by the gods.

2. Cantha palace coast, recently in the guild hall i looked at the globes you can have there, and on it, it looks like the northern coast of cantha is all shattered into little islands and lakes. It seems on the big we have of the world its also that way.made me think, did maybe the tsunami caused by the rise of Orr shattered the coastline and foundations of the Raisu Palace and it collapsed?

3. Whats with all the french named food dishes in the world, where do they come from, as so far we know there is no france on the map, but looked at food there is a france-inspired region somewhere that makes alot of food, where do you think it is?

4. and last a big one about the timeline. We know the personal story starts in 1325 and ends around 60 zephyr 1326 with zhaitans death. Also i think a norn mentions that the Great Hunt takes place in winter as he got held up by a winterblizzard. Wich makes me think the whole personal; story starts at the beginning of winter.Now, we got the very first halloween and wintersday in 2012, wich is supposed to coincide with 1325, we also got a halloween/wintersday every other year. So the very first wintersday we got is supposed to take place in 1325, sooo during the personal story, as zhaitan died in 1326.Makes me think the personal story starts right after the very first halloween, then the prologue and (as human noble story seemingly continues right after the prologue)racial step 1, and then after the first racial step we have the first wintersday, could also be after the second step, before you go play with the orders in your race.What do you think about this idea?

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@"Amanda Whitemoon.6173" said:

3. Whats with all the french named food dishes in the world, where do they come from, as so far we know there is no france on the map, but looked at food there is a france-inspired region somewhere that makes alot of food, where do you think it is?

One might just as easily question why the game has burgers and pizza. Neither the US (main driver of world burger cuisine) nor Italy (conceptual origin of pizza, even if actual Italian pizza isn't like what anyone else eats that's called "pizza") exists in Tyria either.

4. (timeline)

I think you're overthinking it. SWTOR has explicit outside-the-game input from the storywriters about the timeline, although the only specific large amount of time mentioned in-game is the delay while your character is in carbonite at the beginning of the KotFE story (which is specified as "five years", but probably doesn't mean "1825 days"), whereas I'm not aware of any similar input from the GW2 writing team. (Feel free to post links to show that I'm wrong...)

Also note that the first time I saw a level 80 character was almost exactly 200 hours after the servers opened, although the player probably hadn't finished the personal story yet. (He might have done - he had been in-game playing for a hundred of those 200 hours...)

[Taril.8619]

@"Amanda Whitemoon.6173" said:

1. Ascension. In gw1 we had ascension, closer to the stars and Hunted! who all basicly had the same function ingame, but lorewise its different, now i recently saw a video that had all the nightfall cinematics . one of the lines in it , near the end is "we are all touched by abaddon, even who opposed him".Now this god me thinking, what if ascension is just being touched by the gods? Ascension in prophecies basicly is it, Closer to the Stars is it maybe in a way and with Hunted! thta happens right after you get pummeled by abaddon's demons and maybe his energy, and then purify that sanctum wich if im right has something to do with melandru, your basicly touched by the gods too , specifically Abaddon. so all 3 are all just about being touched by the gods.

It's stated in PoF, notably in Elon Riverlands where the Path to Ascension events take place, that Ascension has nothing to do with gods. Which is why there are charr there helping with it despite their shunning of religion.

Though, how accurate it is...

Honestly, most of the details around it seems to utilize Forgotten magic rather than gods.

@"Amanda Whitemoon.6173" said:

3. Whats with all the french named food dishes in the world, where do they come from, as so far we know there is no france on the map, but looked at food there is a france-inspired region somewhere that makes alot of food, where do you think it is?

There's multiple possibilities.

1) One of the races in Tyria could have a language that is similar to French. Given that for story purposes, every single race in the game speaks the same language, but realistically, each race likely developed its own language before learning the currently used one.

2) An ancient civilization could have spoken French. I.e. Orrians. But has since been destroyed.

3) Humans could have brought knowledge of other languages with them from their home planet. There's no "France" in Tyria... But what of their home planet?

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@"Amanda Whitemoon.6173" said:

1. Ascension. In gw1 we had ascension, closer to the stars and Hunted! who all basicly had the same function ingame, but lorewise its different, now i recently saw a video that had all the nightfall cinematics . one of the lines in it , near the end is "we are all touched by abaddon, even who opposed him".Now this god me thinking, what if ascension is just being touched by the gods? Ascension in prophecies basicly is it, Closer to the Stars is it maybe in a way and with Hunted! thta happens right after you get pummeled by abaddon's demons and maybe his energy, and then purify that sanctum wich if im right has something to do with melandru, your basicly touched by the gods too , specifically Abaddon. so all 3 are all just about being touched by the gods.

The difference between Weh no Su and Ascension in lore is questionable. An Empire Divided claims that they're the same thing, and they do have the same result. But as for Hunted! quest, this is lorewise unrelated to Ascension. The Nightfall plot has no Ascension element to it, but mechanically ANet needed to include it so they attached it to the Hunted! quest. The established reasoning from devs at the time (I believe this can even be found in the Making of Nightfall video from the Collector's Edition) is that they didn't want to write a third segment where players seek out a dragon for guidance and seek out Ascension, because it's just re-treading the same plot over and over. So they ignored it entirely, and slapped the mechanic on a primary quest that made the most sense to them.

Nightfall has no lore Ascension, so the comment of "we are all touched by Abaddon" has no relation to Ascension. What Ascension/Weh no Su does is ultimately allow an individual to a) tap into their full magical potential and b) see partway into the Spirit Realm so as to see those who exist halfway and use this to hide themselves from mortals (e.g., mursaat and souls).

2. Cantha palace coast, recently in the guild hall i looked at the globes you can have there, and on it, it looks like the northern coast of cantha is all shattered into little islands and lakes. It seems on the big we have of the world its also that way.made me think, did maybe the tsunami caused by the rise of Orr shattered the coastline and foundations of the Raisu Palace and it collapsed?It's possible, but also unlikely. The same globes showed a giant inland sea where the Desolation was, indicating that when Joko dammed the Elon the Desolation flooded into a giant basin of sorts. This, however, proved false when ANet went and designed Path of Fire.

Anet has grown had a habit of ignoring the small pieces pre-Season 3 lore after HoT's release, and this is one such case, of ignoring the map from Season 2 depicting changes in Elona.

3. Whats with all the french named food dishes in the world, where do they come from, as so far we know there is no france on the map, but looked at food there is a france-inspired region somewhere that makes alot of food, where do you think it is?I wouldn't think much of it. These foods have no English names, and ANet in large are first and foremost English speakers. There's also no lore on the origin of various meals.

4. and last a big one about the timeline. We know the personal story starts in 1325 and ends around 60 zephyr 1326 with zhaitans death. Also i think a norn mentions that the Great Hunt takes place in winter as he got held up by a winterblizzard. Wich makes me think the whole personal; story starts at the beginning of winter.Now, we got the very first halloween and wintersday in 2012, wich is supposed to coincide with 1325, we also got a halloween/wintersday every other year. So the very first wintersday we got is supposed to take place in 1325, sooo during the personal story, as zhaitan died in 1326.Makes me think the personal story starts right after the very first halloween, then the prologue and (as human noble story seemingly continues right after the prologue)racial step 1, and then after the first racial step we have the first wintersday, could also be after the second step, before you go play with the orders in your race.What do you think about this idea?I'd avoid trying to relate every festival in a 1:1 year with the main story. For a few reasons:

1) The gap between Season 2 and Heart of Thorns is canonically 24 hours. During this 24 hours the Mordrem Minions Invade! event occurred. But in reality, 8 months passed. Similarly, there's a year gap between HoT and Season 3, despite only 8 months passing, with the HoT campaign taking ~1.5 months (43 days).2) That source of Zhaitan dying in early 1326 is in direct conflict with the Story Journal panel, which places chapter 8 solely within 1325 AE.3) Originally, Season 1 was written in a way so that the entirety of it occurred... where ever in the story your character was. During Flame and Frost: The Razing, there was dialogue differentiating whether you weren't yet a Pact Commander, were a Pact Commander but didn't kill Zhaitan, or if you did kill Zhaitan. Similar dialogue parameters were seen in The Battle for Lion's Arch: Aftermath update.4) At the same time to point 2, The Lost Shores - that canonically takes place between Thorn's first return and the first Halloween - was written to occur after Zhaitan's death - otherwise the Karka wouldn't risk settling in the Sea of Sorrows.

TL;DR, trying to associate the Mouvelian Calendar to Gregorian Calendar is a mess, despite ANet's attempt at otherwise.

Regarding when the personal story starts - assuming that all five racial storylines start simultaneously - the norn story gives the strongest indication. In lore, Wintersday marks the end of Winter - not the beginning of it as its placement in the Gregorian Calendar would imply (another issue in trying to associate the two). Wintersday is the end of the year, and the Mouvelian Calendar begins on the Spring Equinox - for Gregorian calendar, that's March 21st (usually). But what's important here is that as you mention, the Great Hunt is associated as having been part of winter, and the event that talks about it is post-winter. This means that the norn tutorial must happen in late winter at the earliest, and likely coincides with Wintersday celebrations itself. However, Kryta should be snowing in such an event, and there's no snow in the human tutorial (noticeably), which implies that the personal story starts just after winter and thus it basically begins in the first few weeks of 1325 AE. This would then match the Story Journal's dating it all as 1325 AE.

If we were to properly equate that to our own timeline, then placing Wintersday to occur in proper early March instead of December/January, then the personal story would be beginning late March - giving 7 months before Halloween (in GW1, Halloween is said to occur in the ides of autumn, which would place it at roughly 45 Scion, and associating to Gregorian would place it ~225 days after March 21st, which would indeed be the end of October (October 30th to be exact, but Mouvelian calendar has 5 fewer days). If we were to take Conspiracy of Dunces journal over the Story Journal dates, then Zhaitan would have been killed in 60 Zephyr, 1326 AE, which would make the whole personal story take approximately 420 days, or an average of 42 days per chapter (since Chapter 8 is the length of any other 3 chapters, otherwise it'd be 52 days),

• Wintersday 1324 (Zephyr 1|March 21)
• Personal Story Chapters 1-4, 1325
• Halloween 1325 (Scion 45|October 31)
• Personal Story Chapters 4-8p1, 1325
• Wintersday 1325
• Personal Story 8p2-8p3, 1326
• The Lost Shores and Season 1 (up to and including Tower of Nightmares), 1326

Of course, you hit the snag of The Lost Shores being both in 1325, but also post-Zhaitan.

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

1, i know officialy there is no lore tacjed to hunted and they just needed it, but i do see some relation between the 3, maybe not intentional.

2. for the cantha coast we have to see with EOD.
3. well, maybe some new map will have npc's spaeking with a french accent.
4. im not trying to combine the gregorean and nouvalian calender. wintersday is end of the year, the very last day of 1325, and zhaitan seemingly has been killed after it, in 1326. its that we had a wintersday for each year ingame, including one for 1325,btw im not so sure on the snowing in winter, isnt kryta suposed to be a bit tropical, and isnt all the snow magical?, as in not real?but isnt season1 and lost shores supposed to take place after zhaitan? even if they added in extra dialogue for if you havent finished the story, they still do that now, as with hearts and minds with adding in trahearne if you havent done the order stories.