Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon

GHOSTS OF
ASCALON

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved.

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First Pocket Star Books paperback edition August 2010

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Text design by Jacquelynne Hudson
Cover art by Richard Anderson, map design by AJ Thompson

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-4165-8947-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-5603-2 (ebook)

Dedicated to the millions of gamers everywhere who breathe
life into the worlds the designers create.

Thanks to everyone at ArenaNet, especially
Will McDermott, Ree Soesbee, Randy Price, Stephen Hwang,
Colin Johanson, Bobby Stein, and James Phinney.
Also, many thanks to our editor, Ed Schlesinger.

From Matt:
As always, the greatest thanks go to my wife, Ann, and my kids,
Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. Without their love,
support, and understanding, I can do nothing.

From Jeff:
A special thanks to Jeff Strain, Patrick Wyatt, and Mike O’Brien, the
original founders of ArenaNet and Guild Wars.
Hope you like what we’ve done with the world.

10,000 BE: Last of the Giganticus Lupicus, the Great Giants, disappear from the Tyrian continent.

205 BE: Humans appear on the Tyrian continent.

100 BE: Humans drive the charr out of Ascalon.

1 BE: The Human Gods give magic to the races of Tyria.

0 AE: The Exodus of the Human Gods.

2 AE: Orr becomes an independent nation.

300 AE: Kryta established as a colony of Elona.

358 AE: Kryta becomes an independent nation.

898 AE: The Great Northern Wall is erected.

1070 AE: The Charr Invasion of Ascalon. The Searing.

1071 AE: The Sinking of Orr.

1072 AE: Ascalonian refugees flee to Kryta.

1075 AE: Kormir ascends into godhood.

1078 AE: Primordus, the Elder Fire Dragon, stirs but does not awaken. The asura appear on the surface. The Transformation of the Dwarves.

1080 AE: King Adelbern of Ascalon recalls the Ebon Vanguard; Ebonhawke is established.

1088 AE: Kryta unifies behind Queen Salma.

1090 AE: The charr legions take Ascalon City. The Foefire.

1105 AE: Durmand Priory is established in the Shiverpeaks.

1112 AE: The charr erect the Black Citadel over the ruins of the city of Rin in Ascalon.

1116 AE: Kalla Scorchrazor leads the rebellion against the Flame Legion’s shaman caste.

1120 AE: Primordus awakens.

1165 AE: Jormag, the Elder Ice Dragon, awakens. The norn flee south into the Shiverpeaks.

1180 AE: The centaur prophet Ventari dies by the Pale Tree, leaving behind the Ventari Tablet.

1219 AE: Zhaitan, the Elder Undead Dragon, awakens. Orr rises from the sea. Lion’s Arch floods.

1220 AE: Divinity’s Reach is founded in the Krytan province of Shaemoor.

1230 AE: Corsairs and other pirates occupy the slowly drying ruins of Lion’s Arch.

1302 AE: The sylvari first appear along the Tarnished Coast, sprouting from the Pale Tree.

1320 AE: Kralkatorrik, the Elder Crystal Dragon, awakens. Creation of the Dragonbrand. Breaking of Destiny’s Edge. Founding of the Vigil.

1324 AE: Dougal Keane enters the crypts beneath Divinity’s Reach.

GHOSTS OF
ASCALON

Over the years, Dougal Keane developed a personal rule: Never adventure with people you like. If pressed, he might modify it to: Don’t adventure with people you’d hate to see die. Now, in the depths of the crypts beneath Divinity’s Reach, he was getting his wish. Dougal disliked his comrades intensely. He also hated his task. Most of all, at the moment, he hated the stifling heat of the crypts themselves.

The sweltering summer heat that enveloped Divinity’s Reach above had stolen deep into the bowels of these hidden burial grounds, where it festered like a hidden wound. The prevailing winds that caressed the burial ground’s cliffside entrances might carry the stench of the warm, dry rot away from the city, but inside the crypt’s twisting passages, Dougal had no means of escaping it. People had been bringing their dead here since before the founding of Kryta’s new capital, and Dougal swore he could smell the dust of every last one of them.

Their explorations had taken them into parts of the crypts that even Dougal was unaware existed. At each branching of the path, Clagg had consulted his glowing map, then indicated they take the less-traveled option. The smooth, polished flagstones of the Skull Gate in Divinity’s Reach gave way to less-used paths, and finally to rooms and corridors that had been untouched since the dead were left here to desiccate centuries before the founding of the city above.

Still, as he stalked forward, brittle skull fragments of all shapes and sizes crunching beneath his feet, Dougal reminded himself that these crypts weren’t as bad as some places he had been. The ruined temples of the Caledon Forest, or the Bloodtide Coast, its beaches awash with twitching, malevolent corpses.

Or Ascalon. Never as bad as Ascalon.

Dougal stopped and rubbed the stubble on his chin as he scanned the bone-covered passage before him. It opened into a wide chamber that stretched far beyond the reach of his torch’s light. It was clear of bones.

He didn’t like that.

He signaled for a stop, and his companions—the sylvari, the norn, and the asura riding his golem, the one who’d hired the rest of them for this expedition—pulled up short behind him.

“What is it?” snarled Clagg. The asura was irritable when they first met, and the closed, stuffy air of the tomb had done nothing to improve his disposition.

Clagg’s people had bubbled up from the depths of the world over two centuries ago, harbingers of the fact that the nature of Tyria was about to change. They were
a small people with oversized, flat-faced, ellipsoid heads, the width of which were made more pronounced by long ears, drooping in Clagg’s case. Their skin came in varying shades of gray, their large eyes a product of lives spent in magic-lit caves. The asura arrived on the surface world not so much as refugees as settlers confident in their intellectual and magical superiority over every race they encountered.