I've already done a study on S3, but it's more of a brief overview and there are also several ways to see the ending.
See, the last episode of Season 3, One Path Ends, was not originally planned. It was extra, because there was some time to fill between the original end of S3 and the release of PoF. My original S3 study includes One Path Ends (the real-Lazarus, Exemplar Kerida/Livia stuff, and the return to Orr) and gives it extreme narrative weight, but I won't be doing that here because it doesn't have extreme narrative weight.
While I do think the events happened, I don't think it has any bearing on the narrative arc, as Its supposed developments have no impact on the future story. I'm going pretend the narrative arc ended with the Commander having just faced Balthazar in the volcano. I'll also be ignoring the Knight of the Thorn side-quest.
Now: the story in S3 is about the aftermath of HoT as experienced by the Commander. It's not about the Pact or the sylvari, it's about the Commander.
Trahearne's death was a highly traumatic event. Not only was Trahearne a close friend and ally, but the Commander themself was forced to kill him.
And afterwards there was no support. None of the five allies who were present gave the Commander a shoulder to cry on. Not even Caithe.
Support or the lack of it is a huge marker of the development of trauma after a traumatic event. The Commander has always had support in the past. (This began eroding in HoT as a result of the Commander's actions at the end of S2, and in fact, Trahearne’s death is also consequence of these actions. It's also a result of the Commander continuing to reject the story's thematic Truth.)
In S3, this pattern of lack of support continued; a memorial was held for Eir, but nothing was done for Trahearne. General Almorra showed up in Rata Novus with an update concerning the role of Marshal and Trahearne’s legacy among the members of the Pact.
The Commander further stepped away from the Truth at this moment by resigning from the Pact. This action, I believe, was motivated by a mixture of grief and anger towards the Pact who have been blaming Trahearne for the disaster in Maguuma. That's understandable. But sticking to the Truth requires sacrifice, and the Commander wasn't willing to make it.
At this point in the storyline, the main characters that the Commander has been adventuring with through S2 and HoT - all the potential members of Dragon’s Watch - are the graph that charts the Commander’s growth (or decline) regarding the thematic Truth and Lie. In Guild Wars 2, the number of allies the Commander has directly correlates to how good they is at following the Truth (which is enumerated in the words of the Pale Tree: with unity, many impossible things may be achieved).
With the Commander’s resignation from the Pact, the number of allies they has plummets sharply, leaving them with only the potential members of Dragon’s Watch. Now and for all of S3 and into PoF, every ally counts.
The Commander’s next step, after resigning from the Pact, is to put Dragon’s Watch together, and they manages to recruit Rytlock, Rox, Taimi, and Marjory. Canach is around and involved with the conflict, so he also counts despite not being recruitable yet due to his obligations to Anise.
However, Rox leaves to find Braham, and as of episode 2, Rising Flames, Rytlock is taken off to the Black Citadel indefinitely. These are reminders that the Commander's current lifestyle isn't accomdating the Truth and that they should work on that.
Now, with the conclusion of Rising Flames, the Commander finally receives the payoff from their sacrifice of and departure from the Truth in S2 - Glint’s egg is hatching.
At the same time, the minions of Primordus attack. The Commander defends the egg with ruthlessness and zeal, even going so far as to threaten Lazarus’ life if he goes near the egg. However, he's a mursaat and anyway, the Commander needs his assistance to fight off the Destroyers. It’s simply not a credible threat. The Commander is clearly still suffering from the trauma at the World Summit - and from the Lie associated with it: an overprotectiveness of Glint’s egg that has a strange power to overshadow other practical concerns, given its relative importance.
Lazarus, after proving himself an ally and having done nothing to indicate otherwise, offers aid to the Commander in fighting the dragons (at this point both Jormag and Primordus at once) - something the Commander knows full well is needed and necessary, given the Pact’s devastation in Maguuma and the fact that it is, at this point, still leaderless, not to mention the unprecedented threat of two active dragons at once.
And yet the Commander rejects Lazarus’ offer of aid right out, saying they can’t keep an eye on him all the time; and even when Marjory offers to do that for them, the Commander strenuously objects. Their objection, however, doesn’t have much basis. It seems the Commander is overreacting to a perceived threat to the newly-hatched dragon, but more significantly, they is rejecting a very powerful ally, plus the support of a sizable chunk of the White Mantle - and this rejection is another step into the Lie.
With that, Marjory rejects the Commander’s leadership as the head of Dragon’s Watch and goes to watch Lazarus anyway - nearly an implicit mutiny, not only rejecting authority but usurping the decision of whether or not to ally with Lazarus in the first place. This is a direct consequence, both logically and narratively, of the Commander’s continual rejection of the Truth and constantly clinging to the Lie.
The Commander then asks Caithe to watch the baby dragon. This indicates that they no longer perceives Caithe as being a threat to the egg, especially in contrast to Lazarus.
In the next episode the Commander spends some quality time with Aurene. One thing I notice about their training sessions is that Aurene is being trained to be a hero, set apart and above; she helps feed orphans and aid wounded soldiers, but when she fights, she fights with only the Commander by her side. I can see how Vlast, presumably undergoing the same training, could come to feel isolated. But this isn’t training in the thematic Truth, that unity is required to succeed.
Now, as stories do to characters who aren’t living in the Truth, they will give you a Moment of Truth, an obvious decision point between the Truth and the Lie. This usually happens around the middle of the story, and since the last episode of S3 wasn’t planned, this means the middle of the story is episode three, A Crack In the Ice - yes, the episode with Braham in it.
Now I have a whole separate post for Braham planned, but the narrative role he plays is as a character who is acting within the Truth. His plan for fighting the dragons involves gaining the support of the norn and leading them against Jormag. This is a unity option, and therefore an option that will work, given the dictates of the story. With unity, many impossible things may be achieved.
The Commander’s plan, on the other hand, is to rely on technology and long-forgotten research, to kill two dragons at once “without raising a single sword.” Now, if I was presented this scenario without knowing how it ended, I would have said that Braham’s plan would work and the Commander’s plan would fail, simply because of how one plan adheres to the narrative Truth and one follows the Lie.
Now, of course, these things aren’t so easily known within the story; the characters aren't aware of the Truth/Lie dynamic as such. However, Braham was right. We hadn’t tested our theory, and Jormag was active, at that moment, killing people. Braham’s plan would have put a stop to that. Taimi’s machine would have destroyed the world.
----
And the Commander’s primary objection was that people would die - a nonsensical objection given that people WERE dying. In addition, the Commander knows that dragons always exert a toll in death, and that it is better to die fighting than not to fight at all - one of the primary motivations in the PS, before we knew that dragons could be killed at all. This is part of the trauma the Commander carries from Trahearne’s death. They wasn’t nearly so traumatized by other deaths, but without Trahearne and with little to no emotional support from his death, they have a new fear of people dying - I hate to call it irrational or unreasonable, since death is a horrible thing, but death is something you have to be okay with if you’re fighting a war.
Another part of the Commander’s objection was that just because he might be able to crack the Tooth didn’t mean he could fight the dragon, because the legends were just stories. But the Tooth was previously unbreakable, and being able to crack it is a significant increase in power and a good marker of success.
And, in the end, we find that Taimi’s machine wouldn’t have worked, and its very existence endangered the world once Balthazar stole it. On the other hand, we know that Braham’s plan did work: he cracked the Tooth successfully, and he and his norn had Jormag surrounded just before it went to sleep. And we found in IBS that there was a prophecy, so I firmly believe that Braham would have succeeded at killing Jormag if the machine hadn’t put the dragon to sleep. Braham was right all along - just as I could have predicted knowing only about the Truth and the Lie.
If the Commander was being sensible - not driven by the traumas of the World Summit and having had to kill Trahearne - then they would have seen the merit in Braham’s plan, and would have agreed that he should work on doing that while Taimi pursues her research. The Commander would have chosen to continue helping Taimi, or would have gone with Braham to the front lines, since that’s their specialty. Eventually Taimi would have run her simulation and found that the machine was dangerous, and Braham’s plan would have gone forward. (Ideally, the Commander would also have not antagonized Lazarus, who would have joined them in the Shiverpeaks instead of stealing the machine.) We could have killed Jormag in S3 and the Icebrood Saga wouldn’t have happened and the charr civil war would (probably) have been avoided. Not to mention avoiding a feud with Balthazar, which was unnecessary since we ourselves eventually killed the dragons he was threatening anyway.
But the Commander was suffering from trauma and kept on with their pattern of choosing the Lie, so we got S3 and PoF instead. Braham tried to make the Commander see reason - a bit abrasively, yes, a bit angrily, but with a true heart and true intentions nonetheless - and the Commander rejected everything and, at this narratively crucial moment, chose the Lie instead.
There’s another thing that happens narratively when the wrong choice is made at the Midpoint: the protagonist falls into a worse, deeper Lie to cope with the consequences the story is throwing at them. Look:
After the Commander rejected the Truth and Braham’s plan, they told Braham that he was “taking it lightly” - which Braham took a lot of offense to, and with good reason. He left in anger, their friendship ruined. So the Commander lost a good, loyal ally - and those are in short supply - and fell into the worse, deeper Lie that, not only was unity not required to have victory, but nobody wanted to be their friend or ally anyway. I’m sorry, Commander, but those are the natural (and narrative) consequences of trying to do it on your own.
Losing Braham was the first consequence, but the story continued punishing the Commander in other ways, and also more severely since it seemed they wasn't getting the message. Rox went with Braham, so that’s another ally gone. The Commander’s opportunities to change began drying up, too, after that display of an unwillingness to change. Logan took the position of Marshal, and then Canach refused to join Dragon’s Watch - another ally (or two, depending on how you count) lost.
In episode five (the final episode in this analysis), the machine was lost to Balthazar, and the Commander lost Marjory due to injury.
Even putting the machine out of reach didn’t stop the Commander, however - didn’t make them stop and reconsider that maybe Braham’s way was easier. They could still have gone back and apologized. Instead, the Commander pressed forward, now targeting Balthazar. Kasmeer wasn’t willing to do that, so the Commander lost yet another ally.
It was down to the Commander and Taimi, now. Then, finally, the narrative imposed its last consequence in an effort to deter the Commander from the Lie - Taimi ran her simulation and realized her plan was futile all along, that the machine would destroy the world if activated.
This is turning into quite the tragedy, isn’t it? That this one fatal flaw of the Commander’s should leave them with no allies, no friends, and three hugely powerful enemies - two Elder Dragons and a god of war - and their only plan, their only possible way out, would doom the world. See the decision points that led here, all with their balances resting on the difference between the Truth and the Lie, unity and pride?
Even then, however, the Commander could have backed out; the machine had not yet been activated, and we know that Braham was on the brink of killing Jormag. If the Commander had gone to help kill Jormag, the machine wouldn’t have been able to smash Jormag’s magic against Primordus’, and the destruction of the world would have been averted. (Presumably killing just ONE dragon wouldn’t have destroyed the world, since the Commander would finally have made the right choice.) However, the Commander continued to hope against all reason that the situation could be remedied, and went in to try and stop Balthazar from activating it.
Balthazar activating the machine was the point of no return, but the machine wasn’t activated until the Commander was actually in the volcano. There were many chances for the Commander to make the right choice, and it was never taken, and now the Commander was committed - they could no longer make the right choice. There wasn’t enough time to turn around and join up with Braham. And they’d failed to stop Balthazar, and “victory” meant sparing two Elder Dragons - two active Elder Dragons who would be free to continue terrorizing Tyria.
Now, the dragons were put to sleep, but only because we can’t have a whole Elder Dragon killed offscreen by Braham, and we can’t have the Commander being murdered on the spot by Primordus. And that still left Balthazar. All the same threats as before, and none of the allies. And the Commander was still by themself, laden down with traumas and Lies that would continue ensuring their failure.
~oOoOo~
Keep an eye out for my next post on why I dislike the sixth episode, One Path Ends, which I’ll probably finish before I finish the PoF study.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
This might be poorly written/rambly I’m afraid, and also the time of events mght be all muddled because I can’t remember what order happens what. If I write it out properly I’ll fix it up then. ALSO in Alec’s story, things are not as spaced out because I played through it all at once (Still am). So it’s only been a year since Zhaitain was defeated and the Pact fell. Again this is for @gw2commanderweek
Alec didn’t want anything to do with Glint’s Egg for a long while. The time spent chasing Caithe for the egg was precious time he needed to accompany the Pact to fight Mordremoth.Â
When he discovers that the Pact Fleet was obliterated he’d felt as if he’d completely failed, and held a very deep resentment towards not only Caith but for the egg too, (Btw this isn’t like, a Caithe hate thing but Alec is about 20, and about to fight another war against a dragon, and thousands of his allies have presumably perished in a jungle while he couldn’t help so I feel like resentment would be unavoidable).
The worst thing is that he feels some sort of connection to the egg, and considering he’d also been forced to have another vision (he is still deeply affected and reeling from witnessing the eternal alchemy, when he shuts his eyes for too long he now gets horrible headaches and flashes of it) he doesn’t want to have to look after the thing that he believe caused the pact to fall (sort of). He knows it’s important and he has to look after it, what he doesn’t want is that he starts to care for it. Trekking through the jungle alone, tired and bloody with only this egg for company, he does start to feel protective towards it.
I'm just replaying the White Stag sylvari storyline.
I am struck by how much Caithe hates the Nightmare Court in combination with her Night bloom reservedness. It makes her seem almost cruel.
Caithe really does hate the Court with a passion. She said that they "stole something precious to me." That was Faolain, clearly - but that was twenty-three years ago, at least.
Caithe still feels so strongly about this that she just murders a Courtier we promised freedom to. And I understand killing Courtiers, but we promised to keep this one's secret. The level of hatred Caithe carries around can't be good for her - I imagine that's why, during the Claw Island arc, we see her possible future of falling to Nightmare.
Caithe would be a very scary Nightmare Courtier.
I almost want to write a fic about this, where Caithe does fall to Nightmare - a world where the player never brought Destiny's Edge together.
But I think saying that Caithe would accept Nightmare solely to be with Faolain doesn't do justice to Caithe's personality. Caithe absolutely has the potential to fall on her own. She is full of bitterness because of Faolain.
Caithe killed Wynne because of Faolain. We make a big deal over killing Trahearne, but then we forget that Caithe had to do something very similar - and Wynne wasn't just another sylvari. Wynne was one of the twelve Firstborn, the only people Caithe knew for two years. They were fellow Night blooms.
It must have pained Caithe greatly to kill Wynne, and she can lay the blame for that solidly at Faolain's door. No wonder Caithe hates the Court so much.
And yet, she loves Faolain still so fiercely. It's a beautiful contradiction that I want to explore deeper. I might write a fic about that. Caithe is so alone. She isolates herself. She carries Wynne's secret. She seems exceptionally close with the Pale Tree, and maybe even confides in Trahearne a bit, but otherwise she is alone. She has remarkable strength in not falling to Nightmare already, but I think she lives in a world of grey - and Mordremoth used that to his advantage.
Caithe has been remarkably transformed by Aurene, and we don't see her nearly as much anymore so it doesn't show - but she's happy now. She has a child. She doesn't mind that many of the main characters don't trust her - I mean, she was at Tarir, why didn't she show up in S4 with Taimi, coming after Aurene?
But Caithe doesn't care. She just loves Aurene. She was devastated when Aurene died, but not in the same way she was when she killed Faolain. Faolain, from Caithe's perspective, was tragic - the brightest of the Firstborn, she said, corrupted so soon and twisted into pain and suffering, and finally a victim of Mordremoth.
But Aurene was Caithe's child who was too young to grow up, and then she was dead. I wonder if there wasn't a spark of selfish relief in Caithe's heart when Aurene returned. I think I'm going to give my Commander a touch of regret that Aurene had to return to such a hard world, but by contrast, Caithe would have clung to her baby - the one who brought her out of her darkness and let her move on from Faolain.
Caithe stepped into a leadership role with the Crystal Bloom, and you can find her in Dragonfall worrying about how she's not a leader.
I laughed at her and compared her to Trahearne. She was definitely supposed to show up in the Icebrood Saga - there's a Crystal Bloom in Eye of the North saying she's not here - but all Caithe got was a DRM. I think Caithe should have been a supporting figure for Aurene, there to teach her how to be an adult now and how to be strong in the face of Jormag's temptations.
Because Caithe's story is one of strength, and carrying on through grief, and clinging to an ideal when all hope is gone, even through the darkest hour just before dawn, when all her fears about Mordremoth were coming true and Faolain had turned, a hope comes that she hadn't even looked for, possibly didn't even fully recognize while Aurene was still an egg.
Caithe's story is powerful and it's really sad how undersold it is in-game. She's a hero - an atypical hero, yes, and a dark one with darkness following her everywhere (she threatened to tear out that Courtier's tongue, I'm beginning to think all sylvari can be beautifully eloquent when speaking about graphic details), but a hero nonetheless, a spark of light shining from within the cloud.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Hey guys! So, I’ve tried submitting a drawing to the Guild Wars 2 Fan Forge contest and my artwork was approved! I tried doing something very different from my original style and I wanted to try to make Glint’s Egg. I know it’s a little hard to see. You can probably see it better on the t-shirts.
If you like my design and wish to support it during the contest, click here and give it a rating. :3 Leave comments and spread the word out. Can check out the rest of the entries here
            This is my personal theory of Glint’s Egg that I'm pretty sure hasn't been thought of beforehand.
            In game, the main focus is to kill Zhaitan and then Mordremoth in HoT. That much is known, however, what about the other Elder Dragons? It’s so unbelievable and insane that the death of a Dragon is even possible, that it’s not truly recognized that Tyria could kill all of them. However, what if we could defeat all of the Dragons? That brings up another huge concern that certainly very few if any in Tyria has even thought of: What would happen if all of the Elder Dragons were killed?
            We know by now that the Elder Dragons feed off of huge amounts of magic, most of which is stored and moving throughout ley lines. Now, think of ley lines as the veins of Tyria, pumping and regulating magic throughout the land. Tyria can now be seen as a whole being, a body, while the magic is its’ blood. The Elder Dragons could simplistically be viewed as parasites, but that’s not quite right. As far as we know, the Dragons have been around as long as Tyria, which means that they have always been there to consume and regulate magic. Yes, regulate. Each time the Elder Dragons awake, they consume large amounts of magic, and then go back into a dormant state. Then, as centuries pass, the magic seeps from their bodies and back out into the land. When they have lost a substantial amount of magic, but not all, the Dragons become active and try to feed again. We’ve seen what happens to the land and creatures that live too close to the Dragons’ bodies; they become corrupted. However, the corruption of a single dragon is not worldwide. Since the magic seeps out slowly over time, it could be hypothesized that the magic can become uncorrupted and eventually clean itself by regulating and removing the “toxins” from the ley lines; similar to how our own bodies get rid of toxins. This becomes an easier task the farther away the magic is from the body of the Elder Dragon it originated from.
            This brings me to the next point: When an Elder Dragon dies, where does the magic go? Through the canon timeline of the game, Zhaitan is killed before Scarlet breaks the ley lines to awaken Mordremoth. When Zhaitan is killed, I believe that the magic he stored suddenly released itself back into Tyria and the ley lines. Since Scarlet breaks the ley lines soon after, it’s uncertain as to how this truly affected the land. It could be the explanation as to why there are still risen in Orr though. I also believe that Scarlet took advantage of the sudden influx of magic in the ley lines to speed up the process of awakening Mordremoth even more so than previously known. Therefore, we could not see what the effects of the sudden magic were since Mordremoth consumed it.
            What I’m leading up to is the possibility of Tyria being completely corrupted due to the sudden release of ALL magic from the dead Dragons. This might not be seen until the last Dragon is dead because each time a Dragon dies, its’ magic is suddenly released into Tyria along with whatever Dragons’ magic it consumed beforehand. Each time more magic is released at a sudden rate, it’s possible that another Dragon could awaken due to it consuming said magic. This could also be an indication that each time a Dragon awakens, it’ll be even more powerful than its’ predecessor since it consumed the magic of however many Dragons had died beforehand. Each time a Dragon dies, more magic is released, and when the final Elder is killed, all the magic that has ever existed in Tyria will be released at once. All of this corrupted magic from all of the Dragons will be released at once. Theoretically, since the Elders have been here since the beginning of Tyria, the ley lines have never been completely exposed to all the magic available. It’s like adding more water to an already filled balloon. What happens? It pops because it was never meant to hold that much water in the first place. So even if the ley lines have regulated to magic before, it’s been over many many centuries and has never contained all of the magic possible at once.  Over time, the ley lines may adapt to the influx, but that would be over centuries of time. The corruption would’ve already taken place, and any of the races inhibiting Tyria may become corrupted… almost all of them (I’ll get to that in a bit though). This is why relating the Elder Dragons to parasites is not quite correct; instead, they are more like organs to the body of Tyria. They regulate the magic flow, and if an organ which is regulating the body is suddenly damaged, it causes internal bleeding. Therefore, if we kill off all the Elder Dragons, we would kill Tyria and make the whole planet corrupted. Crazy right?
            There is a solution though! One which no other race on Tyria had even questioned before, and only one individual had foreseen. Glint. The Prophet. A Dragon. Glint, who could have foreseen this future, and knew that the death of the Elder Dragons would cause global corruption, gave Tyria the solution for this catastrophe.
Glints’ Egg.
And who are the sworn protectors of Glints’ legacy, who are not capable of being corrupted and are essentially immortal?
The Exalted.
Makes sense now, right?
            If Glints’ Egg is truly another Dragon, then the child of the only Dragon that had helped the races of Tyria, can become the ultimate regulator for this land. One that is not only extremely powerful due to holding within itself all the powerful Elder Dragons’ magic, but also one who is uncorrupted. If anyone were to want to harm them, then they’d first have to get through the extremely powerful guardians, the Exalted. These protectors would also be able to make sure that the new Dragon would not become corrupted, since it was the underlings of Glint that helped her turn away from Krakalkatorrik from the first place as well.
             These are not the only important factors that should be mentioned. Glint gave us her egg because she believed, if not prophetically saw, that there was a future in which Tyria would defeat all of the Elder Dragons. Glints' Egg is hope for a future without corruption, and with peace instead!
            In short, my theory is that Glints’ Egg would be able to save Tyria from the sudden influx of corrupted magic from the Elder Dragons’ death, and continue to regulate and “clean” the magic within Tyria! Glints' Egg is Tyrias' new hope!
Acrylic Guild Wars 2 fanart painting on wood board I did of Caithe stealing Glint's egg. If you like, you can buy it on my etsy! Www.etsy.com/shop/JenKahnArtist
