Jump to content
  • Sign Up

*Spoilers* how sylvari enter the place in "The Departing"?


alex.7950

Recommended Posts

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:For what it's worth, the Commander isn't the only sylvari soul in the Domain of the Lost. There's a Priory sylvari in the cave where you fight the impostors.

Yep. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/341516/#Comment_341516 I think this got lost in the more involved (and fascinating) discussions in the thread :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 53
  • Created
  • Last Reply

@"Nikolai.3648" said:As far as I remember, Dhuum was not against the existence of souls, but against resurrection. That’s why he uses only his own skeleton minions to begin with, since he created, not awakened them.

You did not play the new raid, I see. Or even read the wiki on it. The entire plot of the new raid and how Dhuum prevented resurrection involves him consuming souls. That's how "every death in the underworld empowers him" - he consumes the souls of the dead. He became more powerful for the raid by diverting the river of souls and thus getting a direct bufeet of every new soul.

: What do you know about Dhuum?Scholar Glenna: He's a fallen god—the immortal embodiment of death itself.Scholar Glenna: I think he was sealed in the Hall of Judgment by Grenth. Reapers were involved...or the heroes who became the reapers.: Why was he sealed away?Scholar Glenna: Dhuum devoured spirits. Under Grenth, human spirits were judged and moved on through the Underworld.Scholar Glenna: Dhuum is death. He wants the end of everything. When he consumes a soul, it's final. And he's insatiable.: How did Dhuum get free?Desmina: With every death, he grows stronger. Dhuum devoured souls for centuries to regain the power to break his bonds.Desmina: He then manipulated the river and corrupted much of the Underworld.Desmina: He's seizing territory to mount his escape to the mortal realm.There is also **nothing** that says Dhuum created those skeletons. Merely that they serve him.And Dhuum's very goal is to literally "the irrevocable consumption of mortal souls." He's not so much "against the existence of souls" but rather "intends to consume every living and dead being's soul to utterly destroy all life and death."> @Nikolai.3648 said:> His idea of life seems to include emotions, which his minions lack.Got any source for that? Of *either* points there? There's no mention of what Dhuum views as living, beyond him willing to hunt down those who "escaped death", and a good 90% of all foes from both games lack depicting any kind of reaction at all, so that's not a good judgment for "his minions lack [emotions]."> @Nikolai.3648 said:> This does not contradict the idea that creating a minion also creates a soul. It even makes sense. In GW1 we are clearly told that Dhuum was able to gain energy from us slaying his minions. This can only be the case if his minions had souls, which he then consumed. This clearly indicates that those undead are nor without souls.You seem to be under the misunderstanding that "Dhuum's minions" refer solely to those skeletons. This is incorrect - it primarily refers to the many demons under his employ, such as the dryders and the dream riders.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> Besides that, GW1 necromancers had the soul reaping attribute, that was at that time exclusively linked to killing things (and not also using your axe 2 skill) and then reaping their souls. It did also trigger on the deaths off summoned undead, which also implies that these minions did in fact had a soul. This would also make him into the first example of someone indeed generating energy by creating and then reaping souls, like i suspected it to be possible. That's pure mechanical. Everything gives life force (or triggers soul reaping in GW1). Even destroying doors.Do doors have souls?> @Nikolai.3648 said:> The more intelligent ones are clearly able to communicate with us, which just proves that the sylvaris are simply wrong with some of their assumptions, as seen with the risen that killed Dahlia. The ones who are still acting in a simple manner are also multiple times suspected to evolve slowly, but only time can show us the results of that. You're creating a false equivalence there by claiming the sylvari must be wrong about everything because they're ignorant on one thing. Besides which, you're wrong in the first part of your conclusion: just because something's intelligent doesn't mean there is a chance of communication. The Risen Knights have shown they hold no interest in communication the majority of the time - hence why one instantly killed Dahlia. And what little communication they give, there's no compromise so that's not much of communication in the first place.And no, those "still acting in a simple manner" are not ever suspected to evolve slowly - the only time they show any change is when an Unchained Knight is near them, commanding them.They're like insect drones, effectively. Mindlessly doing a task until an overseer gives them new orders.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> The fact that the sylvari even bother to think about the possibility of them having emotions indicate that they show signs of it, as we can also clearly see. If you call feeling pain and anger as not having emotions, I don’t know what to say. They clearly show these emotions, even after being freed from Zhaitan. Since I just was on the map, I can guarantee you that this includes the not so powerful ones. This makes them sentient. I can consider the possibility that dogs could talk. So... does that mean there are signs of dogs talking? You're creating a straw man argument here, by proclaiming that thinking about the possibility of something is evidence for that something existing. The imagination, especially of fictional characters, is not so limited as to be incapable of considering what cannot exist.Also, asura not sylvari there. Risen do not "feel pain and anger". The asura are theorizing what possibilities there may be, not stating that such is the case.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, it is indicated that every animal has a Spirit of the Wild associated with it, as seen with Griffon, Gorilla and Otter. They are simply rarely honored. Second, there are more spirits of animals around than you claim. One further example would be the ghost cat you can get for your home instance. By now it would be odd to assume that those with spirits shown ingame are the exception to the norm, when we had to wait 5 years for the first sylvari spirit. We simply don’t see more spirits because there was no special reason to show us them, not because they don’t exist.Having a Spirit of the Wild associated with an animal does not mean the actual animals have souls. It means that there is a divine-like being who associates itself with the animal species.When there are only about 10 non-Foefire (which is weird magic to begin with), non-summoned, and non-Spirits of the Wild-or-related animal ghosts in the game, out of millions of animals and dozens upon dozens of situations for which they could be called upon, I would indeed consider them exceptions to the norm. Just because we "had to wait 5 years for the first sylvari spirit" doesn't mean we should assume everything we cannot see having a soul has one.You're trying to argue the existence of something without solid evidence. By that very right, I might as well invoke "Hitchen's Razor": What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.Which, suffice it to say, means that discussion would go nowhere.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> So, you claim him to do that. That’s fine by me. While not provable, it's not an illogical claim, but again, it changes nothing about the soul. I personally would not bold the word "everyone", as at least one mursaat, the forgotten and some seers where still around at that time and knew about the elder dragons. Was it common knowledge? No. But Duncan was a specialist and I don’t like having words put into NPCs mouth without prove they really said that. Especially in an argument about that NPC.By "everyone" I (rather obviously if you don't want to cherrypick semantics) meant modern society.Yes, Forgotten knew, but they were secluded from all society. There's no indication any of the eight surviving mursaat or the last knew of the Elder Dragons either, BTW. Their race may have encountered them, but the individuals sure didn't, and there's only one surviving mursaat record (and no surviving seer records) that we have any knowledge about. With no indication of how old that mursaat record is, or whether or not the said surviving eight mursaat knew said record's contents.As for "Duncan was a specialist" - sure, okay. But how much could he know? Dwarven records of the time were destroyed, lost, or [so heavily rewritten they're hard to tell truth from fiction](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scholar_Trueclaw). And the only dwarf to have read the Tome of Rubicon, which by all our knowledge is the sole dwarven record to talk about the Great Destroyer's nature, was High Priest Alkar.We don't need to know what Duncan says to know what he knows, when we're talking about forbidden texts that no one but one individual knows about at the time. It's pretty obvious that Duncan does not know what Alkar and Alkar alone knows.Unless Duncan was a mind reader. Or he somehow got some unknown, never hinted at, source of knowledge about things that no one knew about but super-isolated people on the other side of the continent.But that's a bit of a stretch there.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> We are never told that it is impossible to check if a soul resides somewhere in the afterlives without summoning them.But we are also never given a hint or indication that it is possible. It's safer to assume impossible until otherwise suggested than to assume possible without any indication of such.Besides which, if it were possible to "check if a soul resides somewhere" without summoning, then why do we see so many cases of unknown fates for souls? How could people not have checked where souls that went to the Realm of Torment had gone, and learn about this hidden-from-mortal-records afterlife of a forgotten god?The concept of being able to tell where a soul resides without actually summoning the soul (which itself is a very dangerous process as shown in both games) would create hundreds of plotholes that it's just not even funny.> @Nikolai.3648 said:> But it seems far more likely than to get his whole dungeon set up for a mere chance of success of a complicated ritual which probably strained his resources and would lead to an immense loss of prestige and influence if he failed. Again, that seems like a beginner's mistake to me, not something Duncan would do. When you're evil with an army of slaves at your beck and call, you tend to get a little arrogant.You also make it sound like Slavers' Exile sole purpose was to summon the Great Destroyer's soul, and not because the Stone Summit were, y'know, exiled... They had to go *somewhere* after being forced north out of Deldrimor. That somewhere, given all other dungeons and the like, was most likely Slavers' Exile.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think itn depends a lot on the type of minion. Risen are without a doubt soulless. They where alive ones, they died. Their souls went to the mists and the bodies where turned into minions. This is simular how necromancer minions are soulles.

Branded are turned into minions by life, so it is pretty much possible, they still contain the initial soul. The same goes for Icebrood.

Destroyer and mordrem/silvari are in between. They are created.To answer this. First lets look at what a soul is. "there is a belief in the incorporeal essence of a living being called the soul" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoulAs the lore confirms the existance of souls, it is (in the game lore) no longer a belief. There is an incorporeal essence of a living being. This means that everything that lives has a soul. One can say however, that the soul is part of the identity. Most minions do not have such identity and can be seen soulless. However, the special ones do have an identity, and therefor a soul. Take for example Faolain. When she is turned into a mordrem she keeps her memories and identity. She makes remarks how touching it is that destinies edge is together again.

However. Caithe make a remark just after that it isn't Faolain. That she sees Mordremoth behind her eyes. The way I see it, the identity is partly destroyed when a silvari is converted to a mordrem. So the soul is partly gone and part of it is still there. Specially if Mordremoth didn't have to remove much 'good'. As Faolain allready had a lot of evil inside her, she is easier to control by mordremoth and so he keeps her soul more intact then others.

Silvari have their own identity and therefor a full soul that can go to the realm of lost souls.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:I think itn depends a lot on the type of minion. Risen are without a doubt soulless. They where alive ones, they died. Their souls went to the mists and the bodies where turned into minions. This is simular how necromancer minions are soulles.

Branded are turned into minions by life, so it is pretty much possible, they still contain the initial soul. The same goes for Icebrood.

Destroyer and mordrem/silvari are in between. They are created.To answer this. First lets look at what a soul is. "there is a belief in the incorporeal essence of a living being called the soul" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoulAs the lore confirms the existance of souls, it is (in the game lore) no longer a belief. There is an incorporeal essence of a living being. This means that everything that lives has a soul. One can say however, that the soul is part of the identity. Most minions do not have such identity and can be seen soulless. However, the special ones do have an identity, and therefor a soul. Take for example Faolain. When she is turned into a mordrem she keeps her memories and identity. She makes remarks how touching it is that destinies edge is together again.

However. Caithe make a remark just after that it isn't Faolain. That she sees Mordremoth behind her eyes. The way I see it, the identity is partly destroyed when a silvari is converted to a mordrem. So the soul is partly gone and part of it is still there. Specially if Mordremoth didn't have to remove much 'good'. As Faolain allready had a lot of evil inside her, she is easier to control by mordremoth and so he keeps her soul more intact then others.

Silvari have their own identity and therefor a full soul that can go to the realm of lost souls.

I can understand your point, but I would be rather careful with any definition of the word as we normally use it. From an earthly standpoint I would probably agree with the idea that a soul would be imprinted by the personality of the living creature. After all, that is what sets truly living and merely existing with a metabolism apart. There are a bunch of spirits who lost their identity, not only in the underworld. While most of them try to regain their memories (which could set them apart from truly lost souls), we don’t know if all of them will be successful. However, this opens up the path to many more questions: Do people with multiple personalities have multiple souls? Does that mean that a perfect AI with a personality (keep in mind that the human brain is basically a carbon based biologically computer) would have a soul? All interesting questions, but as long as we lack a clear definition of what makes a soul in Tyria, we can't really tackle them.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:As far as I remember, Dhuum was not against the existence of souls, but against resurrection. That’s why he uses only his own skeleton minions to begin with, since he created, not awakened them.

You did not play the new raid, I see. Or even read the wiki on it. The entire plot of the new raid and how Dhuum prevented resurrection involves him consuming souls. That's how "every death in the underworld empowers him" - he consumes the souls of the dead. He became more powerful for the raid by diverting the river of souls and thus getting a direct bufeet of every new soul.

I did not have the privilege to play the new raid yet, that is right. It will probably be a while, also because I am not really excited to encounter the new form of what they made of Dhuum (imo terrible design choice that lost the reaper look and went for satyr style, lack of all caps, no longer speaks in third person, wtf is this ugly scythe, where are my dryders?), but mostly because I lack a static raid group. I did however try to inform myself on the wiki (obviously, when discussing the subject) about it. However, the wiki does a terrible job in spreading the information to places where they could be needed. This has been this way for a while, but the raids are a prime example of it and a reason why I don’t enjoy looking the information up online. For example, the fact that Dhuum needs to consume a soul to prevent its resurrection is not mentioned on Dhuums page itself, nor the Hall of Chains page. We knew that he consumes the souls of the dead, not that it is necessary for him to do so to prevent resurrection. Actually, I still only see one person claiming such and she is clearly knowledgeable but not guaranteed right on everything she says. But I will let this slide after our discussion about unreliable narrators, as I am sure that there must be multiple people in the raid commenting on that, if you call me out on missing such a detail. I don’t get why this makes my quoted sentence invalid, though. I still see Dhuum as primary using the souls to gain energy, now with the added benefit for him that it also prevents resurrection in one swoop. He has nothing against the existence of souls (which wouldn’t make much sense either, as he is the god of death, making life a resource for him) itself, which is what I claimed.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:There is also nothing that says Dhuum created those skeletons. Merely that they serve him.

So where do they come from? We know that they are not regular residents of the underworld, as they showed up in GW1 only after Dhuum started to regain power. We can conclude that they are not awakened from the fact that Dhuum hates resurrection. The most logical conclusion would be that Dhuum creates them. But please, enlighten me.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:And Dhuum's very goal is to literally "the irrevocable consumption of mortal souls." He's not so much "against the existence of souls" but rather "intends to consume every living and dead being's soul to utterly destroy all life and death."

To compare, here is what he says himself about that matter (from the wiki):

"Upon encountering Dhuum:Dhuum: Mortals. You believe yourselves saviors, naturally.Dhuum: You seek to write the conclusion of your legend.Dhuum: There is no conclusion more natural than death.When Dhuum gets up from his throne:Dhuum: I am your end.When Dhuum uses Greater Death Mark:Dhuum: Struggle. Submit. Flee. No matter. Your life is mine.When Dhuum uses Soul Shackle:Dhuum: Join one another in sacrifice.One of the following when a player dies:Dhuum: Breathe your last.Dhuum: Struggle no more.Dhuum: I am your end.Dhuum: All must end.Dhuum: Surrender, in body and spirit.When Dhuum reaches 10% health and slays the Seven Reapers:Dhuum: YOU CANNOT VANQUISH DEATH ITSELF."

Again, his goal seems to make sure that death is final, which includes the consumption of the soul as it seems, not the end of creation. This is arguably not even evil in itself. Which leads me to the question: Where did you get that third quote from? Or are the quoting marks just to show you are trying to describe what you think his goals are? I honestly can't tell.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:You seem to be under the misunderstanding that "Dhuum's minions" refer solely to those skeletons. This is incorrect - it primarily refers to the many demons under his employ, such as the dryders and the dream riders.

I was aware of that. But where do these other enemies in the underworld get their soul from? Besides, it does not make the claim any less valid. Just because he also gains energy from other resources does not mean he did not gain anything from his skeletons.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:Besides that, GW1 necromancers had the soul reaping attribute, that was at that time exclusively linked to killing things (and not also using your axe 2 skill) and then reaping their souls. It did also trigger on the deaths off summoned undead, which also implies that these minions did in fact had a soul. This would also make him into the first example of someone indeed generating energy by creating and then reaping souls, like i suspected it to be possible.

That's pure mechanical. Everything gives life force (or triggers soul reaping in GW1). Even destroying doors.

Do doors have souls?

I will give you that. Again, not everything though! Bound Spirits for example do not. Which is even more interesting in that context. Also, where did we need to kill a door in GW1? Not saying it did not happen, but I am not remembering it and would like to trigger my memories of it. Thanks in advance.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:just because something's intelligent doesn't mean there is a chance of communication. The Risen Knights have shown they hold no interest in communication the majority of the time - hence why one instantly killed Dahlia.

True, intelligence does not always mean it can communicate. The risen in question was able to talk to us though, so why not Dahlia?

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:They're like insect drones, effectively. Mindlessly doing a task until an overseer gives them new orders.

Except, compared to insects, they feel pain and anger, which makes them sentient. They don’t have to be intelligent to feel.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:Also, asura not sylvari there. Risen do not "feel pain and anger". The asura are theorizing what possibilities there may be, not stating that such is the case.

You can literary see risens cry out in pain during combat and be happy/fulfilled when they are laid to rest. How is that without emotions?

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, it is indicated that every animal has a Spirit of the Wild associated with it, as seen with Griffon, Gorilla and Otter. They are simply rarely honored. Second, there are more spirits of animals around than you claim. One further example would be the ghost cat you can get for your home instance. By now it would be odd to assume that those with spirits shown ingame are the exception to the norm, when we had to wait 5 years for the first sylvari spirit. We simply don’t see more spirits because there was no special reason to show us them, not because they don’t exist.

Having a Spirit of the Wild associated with an animal does not mean the actual animals have souls. It means that there is a divine-like being who associates itself with the animal species.

When there are only about 10 non-Foefire (which is weird magic to begin with), non-summoned, and non-Spirits of the Wild-or-related animal ghosts in the game, out of millions of animals and dozens upon dozens of situations for which they could be called upon, I would indeed consider them exceptions to the norm. Just because we "had to wait 5 years for the first sylvari spirit" doesn't mean we should assume everything we cannot see having a soul has one.

You're trying to argue the existence of something without solid evidence. By that very right, I might as well invoke "Hitchen's Razor": What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Which, suffice it to say, means that discussion would go nowhere.

You are right on that, we clearly have different opinions on that subject. If my explanation until now wasn’t enough, I doubt I can change your mind with everything else the game has to offer right now. Even if anet put more animal spirits into the game, you would likely just dismiss them with the same argument. And I am quite sure we won't get an official statement regarding spirits and souls anytime soon.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:So, you claim him to do that. That’s fine by me. While not provable, it's not an illogical claim, but again, it changes nothing about the soul. I personally would not bold the word "everyone", as at least one mursaat, the forgotten and some seers where still around at that time and knew about the elder dragons. Was it common knowledge? No. But Duncan was a specialist and I don’t like having words put into NPCs mouth without prove they really said that. Especially in an argument about that NPC.

By "everyone" I (rather obviously if you don't want to cherrypick semantics) meant modern society.

I am not cherry-picking here, you fully capitalized and bolded something that was factually wrong. It seemed worthy to point out.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:But we are also never given a hint or indication that it is possible. It's safer to assume impossible until otherwise suggested than to assume possible without any indication of such.

Again, while I would normally agree with you here, when enough hints are given they should be taken into context and being elevated into the state of evidence of lower quality, like it is common in courts.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:Besides which, if it were possible to "check if a soul resides somewhere" without summoning, then why do we see so many cases of unknown fates for souls?

It is probably not used often because it is complicated, dangerous and consumes a lot of energy and resources. Which makes it worth doing for the Great Destroyer, but normally people would just assume someone died and went on. Besides, the arts of the ritualists were not that common to begin with.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:How could people not have checked where souls that went to the Realm of Torment had gone, and learn about this hidden-from-mortal-records afterlife of a forgotten god?

Again, the people were either not important enough or there was no reason to it. I agree with you though, there are a lot of issues that make it sound off that people did not learn about Abaddon earlier, but this isn't one of them.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:When you're evil with an army of slaves at your beck and call, you tend to get a little arrogant.

Duncan especially hired guards to defend him and went through a lot to make the dungeon happen. All that while being completely competent in what he did. Sounds off to me that he merely got a little bit arrogant. I guess we won't agree on this point either.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:You also make it sound like Slavers' Exile sole purpose was to summon the Great Destroyer's soul, and not because the Stone Summit were, y'know, exiled... They had to go somewhere after being forced north out of Deldrimor. That somewhere, given all other dungeons and the like, was most likely Slavers' Exile.

The german version of the game makes it clear that it is the exile of 1 (one) Slaver. Making it clear that this is about Duncan and not the Stone Summit as a whole. Translation issues aside, the stone summit seems more than busy with their attacks on Jalis. Duncan probably acts on his own and got his hands on some loyal dwarfs, the main force should be somewhere else. We did not explore enough of the mountains to know where exactly, but it is not unlikely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...