The Krait. Savage by Nature or Savage by Reason?

Okay, now I understand and agree with you. And as I've promised before I cancel all of my statements which have no proof and/or only speculations.
By the way thanks for the arguement. I gained a lot of experience from it that I can use in the future.
And I'll attend your next theories and threads with great interest.

That's exactly what I tried to say. It just doesn't make sense.

That's Leon's magic alright.

Explain the stairs on the giant pyramid then.

If any object was left, it would have been found. And again, Riven Earth is not near Old Jones' route - which is the main flaw in your argument.

The area between Giant's Basin and Verdant Cascades is the area I meant for another jungle. Or off the map (though that is less likely).

No, but I would expect the towers to be at least taller than human structures. Ascalon City and even the ruins throughout Ascalon are taller than those towers.

Thalador Doomspeaker, you seemed to completely ignore the fact that the location of the "unseen" force (never says what it is afterall) is in the unexplorable area between where Old Jones is and Riverside Province (outpost). Which is the main thing against what you have said.

I'll give you and Kerwyn the jade being battle resources argument. And just a note: The Mursaat, though at an unknown time, did have a war with the Seers.

That is, more or less, what I was meaning. Not towers that literally reach to the heavens (that is literally impossible) but instead towers of immense height that it's hard to see the end when at the bottom - or simply towers taller than any other structure the man has seen.

I blame my germanic ancestry and short temper. :x Yes, unintended.

I've got it all explained in GWO.. And somewhere in the GWEN Manuscripts states that the Pyramids are, indeed, asuran made.

EDIT:
uhm, here:

I still find stairs to be Asuran made to be quite... ridiculous.

Have you looked at how they walk? There is NO way their legs can easily go up steps that would work for humans. Even on a ramp I'd say that they'd have troubles going up and down to be honest.

Partially is the key word there.
Also, the stairs exist only in their cities. That.. uhm, lab in the southeast corner of Alcazia has a ramp, not a stair. Would that mean anyhing?

Only confusion. The cities and CTC are still mainly Asuran.

So, why the stairs? x_x

The original builders of those structures must've walked upright.

On the connection between Mursaat structures and jade, one thought strikes my mind: Most jade artifacts are magical in some form (jade constructs, soul batteries, attached to an ether seal). It's possible that the jade is the material of choice for magic items, but more mundane architecture can be made out of whatever is convenient. Since it seems that the Mursaat campaign in the Shiverpeaks was being carried out from the Ring of Fire (that's where the gate we go through from Thunderhead Keep leads, anyway...) it's also possible that the preponderance of jade we see comes because that's the most convenient magical material that can be created from resources in the Ring of Fire, but Mursaat in other parts of the world might use other materials instead.

On the other hand, the pyramids and such still don't look anything like what you'd expect Mursaat architecture to look like from Prophecies. To be honest, the bird motif doesn't exactly seem appropriate for the until recently subterranean Asura, either. (I could see it in GW2 as a symbol of their new life on the surface, but in EOTN they still seemed pretty much in denial).

The gripping hand is that, due to the amount of reused artwork, it's hard to draw convincing lore conclusions from EOTN in general and the Tarnished Coast in particular, since anything we find may be something that was supposed to have meaning in Utopia, but was pushed into EOTN because it had already been done and they didn't want to waste the work. So, for instance, the ruins in the Tarnished Coast might have been intended to be Mursaat, but since the Tarnished Coast zones are largely transplanted Utopia leftovers, we get the Mesoamerican architecture instead of something more characteristically Mursaat.

Personally, I hadn't noticed a correlation between delaying metamorphosis and what they change into. That said, I haven't really been paying much attention, but my gut is telling me that the last low-level Neoss is at least as likely to be an Arcanoss as a Devouss. In fact, thinking on it, in what I can remember from my experience is that Devousses tend to be among the first to change if they're in a mob (which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint - be a specialised healer when there are still allies to heal).

If there is a correlation between time of metamorphosis and post-change identity, however, this could as easily be explained by some forms being more reluctant to change prematurely than others rather than the form taken being an intelligent choice.

True, but other times the Neoss dies before the bar fills and the corpse is exploited, and the new form STILL pops. You'd think the critter would be in pretty bad shape by the time its bones climbed out and started walking around on its own.

Of course, this could be a similar lore/mechanics snarl as Mantids show in the Charr Homelands, which can still be exploited even when they're actually not quite dead yet. However, they normally pop back up seriously injured rather than at full health, while the mechanics of the game appears to deal with Krait metamorphosis simply be despawning the original creature and spawning a new one. On the other hand, it could also be a hint that the final form is in fact a new creature.

Not exactly.

The bird motifs also appear in the CTC stairs, wich means that they just 'brought' that piece of design to aboveground.

I found something that, after reading carefully this thread is.. interesting.

I was wandering through youtube, watching a coulpe of trailers, and something caught my attention. In the GWEN trailer, at exactly 1:15 minutes (in this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaCHRHKoDn4) we actually see a Devouss flying through the Geomystic Generators of Rata Sum.

It's the only pic we got from the Tarnishes Coast in the trailer, so it could've been just a way of puting the Krait along with an Asuran city, but still..

I remember that as well. Was expecting to see that in game at some point. Could help or not matter with this theory.

Aye. But my point was... why would a subterranean and, during the period of EOTN, agoraphobic race preferentially use a creature of the air in their architecture? Could the CTC be just another case of recycled work from EOTN?

If the answer is "no", we're still left with the first question - which could lead in interesting directions regarding Asura (pre-)history but, alas, I doubt any of them would be verifiable.

Pointed that way it does seem strange.. but I got the idea that the bird designs are asuran because of the Foundry.

Every area covered with the ruins *without the intervention of the asura on it* appear without the bird-like motifs, and the ruins that were recicle by the Asura appear with the bird designs.

Now the 'why' of that..

the krait and naga could be some how related

explain yourself? Just because some of their forms look serpentine..

It's called convergent evolution.

I was exploring the ruins in Arbor Bay, which is the place where the quest 'O Brave New World' takes place. In this quest those structures look like the pyramids the Asura use. I've made some screens:

And there's another important thing: those buildings are destructed. It would seem that this area was hit by a catastrophe. Perhaps a landslide or an earthquake.
Now it seems that the Asura see this place for the first time and they find it fitting for construction.
If the Asura built those pyramids in Rata Sum then the pyramids might belonged to another tribe of Asura which came to the Tarnished Coast before the other Asura arrived. And you can see it in one of my picture, that this place is in some kind of cave and there's only one break where the sun shines in.

I maybe wrong about this like before :S

Their body structure appears far too different, much like the difference between the Naga and the Forgotten.

Krewe. Not tribe.

And yes, those are ruins that 'belonged' to the race that originally built them. As the Asura found the ruins in Rata/Vlox's/CTC, they found those ones.

What traits are similar? It could be same for Saltspray Dragons and Krait if we go by looks. Or Forgotten and Krait. Or the Bone Dragons and Krait. It's just re-use of models.

Their only relation would be that the Krait and Naga (and Forgotten) are serpentine.

Surprisingly enough (or not) this was the whole issue of the confusion of the ruins. The Pyramid is seen in the Central Transfer Chamber. The only thing the Arbor Bay ruins don't have are the generators and other various floating objects. No offense, but you've merely just restated everything discussed on this so far - leaving out the Krait as a possible race for those that built the ruins.