Almorra Soulkeeper Clarification question?

[therapite.3645]

I have a clarification question when it comes to Kralkatorrik's branding and the Soul warband in regards to Almorra Soulkeeper being left untouched. It could just be the wording used, but I figured I would ask anyway.

We know that Almorra was the only member of the Soul warband to miraculously escape being branded, but how did it happen?

Reading Almorra's Massacre again, I was given the impression that the warband was traveling with Harthog in the rear, Almorra in front of him, and the rest of their warband ahead of them. She had a weird feeling along with Harthog and he was the first to see Kralkatorrik coming up from the mountain range behind them (so he must have turned around at said feeling).

She reaches out to shake his shoulder, only to be met with his turn into Branded. There are screams behind her as she feels a pressure at her back as Kralkatorrik passed overhead and created the Dragonbrand. After dispatching Harthog, she turns back around to see her warband fighting with each other before she steps in. Once done, she looks around to see all the land around her having been corrupted.

So with Harthog turned in front of her, her warband turned behind her, and the area around her branded, how did she not become corrupted? Is it really just that she was the only thing that wasn't touched when everything else around her was? Otherwise, I don't know why I'm reading it as if there was something about her that for some reason made it so that she wasn't branded. I honestly forget if there were canon, in-game dialogue reasons or clarifications given so be gentle please as you tell me that I'm wrong about this all.

Thank you!

[Ronharshadow.5246]

Now that you mentioned that I think that is very strange. I'm assuming she was in cover or had an amulet/magic that resists Kralkatorrik's powers I think when the commander wants to fight that dragon they will bring her for closure or plot convenience with an amulet or something else/

[Rognik.2579]

You said it yourself, the warband was fighting itself, meaning not all of her warband was Branded. It seems like some were corrupted, and others weren't. It's just that, after the fighting, she was the only non-Branded left. Do I know the rhyme or reason why some were spared? No, and I don't think anyone does. We do know the Brand itself doesn't do the corrupting, though. Perhaps this is another one of those "willpower" things.

[therapite.3645]

@Rognik.2579 said:You said it yourself, the warband was fighting itself, meaning not all of her warband was Branded. It seems like some were corrupted, and others weren't. It's just that, after the fighting, she was the only non-Branded left. Do I know the rhyme or reason why some were spared? No, and I don't think anyone does. We do know the Brand itself doesn't do the corrupting, though. Perhaps this is another one of those "willpower" things.

But we do know that her whole warband except for her was branded. They all turned and she was the only one who was left, and she let them fight themselves before taking out the ones who were left. It's part of the lore of it and part of the whole 'wow this was incredible' part of all the writing about it. She was the only one who survived from her warband.

That said, they all turned and started fighting one another. She was the only one who didn't suddenly find the desire to start to accessorize in purple crystals is all XD

@Ronharshadow.5246 said:Now that you mentioned that I think that is very strange. I'm assuming she was in cover or had an amulet/magic that resists Kralkatorrik's powers I think when the commander wants to fight that dragon they will bring her for closure or plot convenience with an amulet or something else/

But nothing at all mentions these things They had to all have been close together since the whole rest of her warband got turned into branded, and no one else was spared, so cover doesn't seem to be the case. And why would she have had something on her or some kind of heretofore unknown magical resistance and then never thought to mention it in the entire time that she founded the Vigil? It's more mysterious than miraculous the more that I look into this and their wording is not clear!

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Unfortunately this is just another case of "wait what" in Anet lore. When asked directly why Almorra survived, the devs (I believe it was Jeff Grubb) responded with "she was outside the dragonbrand while the others weren't" but as mentioned, that doesn't make much sense as she was between one individual who was branded and the rest.

But ultimately, the reason why is boiled down to pure luck.

She's not the only one who lost her whole warband to Kralkatorrik's flight - in Elon Riverlands, there's a charr among the Followers of Ascension that mentions he was in the Brand when it was created and survived, having fled when the dragon flew over. How he survived isn't elaborated, just that he had grabbed the cub Flint who was with his Anvil Warband and ran when the chaos began, going back later to find them all Branded.

[Danikat.8537]

Along it's edges the brand is patchy, with branded ground interspaced with untouched ground. To me that implies that the magic isn't uniform - it dissipates as it spreads out from the dragon. So maybe Almorra and her warband were on the edges of the branded and she and some of the others just happened to be standing on patches that weren't affected, but the others who weren't turned were then killed in the fighting.

However it happened I definitely got the impression that the important part of her story was that there isn't anything special about her - not inherent to her or something she was wearing or carrying or doing - it was just blind luck. She could have died as easily as anyone else in her warband and any one of them could have been the one to survive. The same thing that happens to soldier's all the time in real life - a bomb goes off or someone starts firing on you or whatever and you're "lucky" enough to get away with survivable injuries (or even no injures) and the memory of seeing all your friends die in front of you.