Guild Wars 2

So as we all know the Human Gods brought along various Kitteneaters who ended up not being very good Gods, things like Dhuum (Dwyna let him come along because?) and Abbadon, which for some reason were once a part of the pantheon.

However we have an oddball in the good family tree, which is Menzies.

While Dhuum could arguable have been considered important and respected at one time by his fellow Gods, Menzies just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d let cross over the mists with you to help your human progeny grow and develop. He’s evil, has domain over horrifying shadow monsters, and wants to pry the God of Warfare from his seat despite Balth being pretty good at his job. Not to mention Arena net goes out of their way to mention he’s Balth’s Half-Brother…

Maybe, just maybe… Balth and Menzies were born after the arrival of the gods… This would exclude any questioning behind the reasoning of bringing in a mustache twirling villain over the mists with you.

That doesn’t even cover the confusion of Balth and Menzies parents.

doesn’t know enough lore about the gods to make a proper argument

so i’ll just say that abbadon was actually a pretty swell guy. problem is he was a bit too good, so he didn’t think through the consequences of giving everyone magic (i think). he was cast down for being so nice he was stupid, but hey, now we have magic

Abbadon was immature, that aside I don’t think I got anything wrong here.

just thought you looked down on poor ol’ abby, and i think he doesn’t deserve that :P

Still, this thread is still about Menzies, guy was such a mystery. Makes me wonder more about the family ties of Gods

Like we know Grenth is Dwayna’s kid, and that Abbadon had a predecessor.

So the idea that Balth and Menzies shares one parent leaves a lot unknown.

This is pure speculation on my part but because Balthazar and Menzies are half brothers and Menzies is not part of the pantheon, he might be a half-god similar to Grenth, possibly born to a mortal mother and divine father, guessing based on the fact that when Balthazar game to Tyria he carried the head of his father, which seems to indicate his father may have been a god as well. This also would explain why Menzies is not part of the main pantheon. He may have been born someehere other than Tyria after the Dwayna and Melandru appeared but before Balthazar himself arrived. This could explain his presence in the Fissure of Woe and Ravenheart Gloom but little, if any, influence on the people of Tyria. Maybe the reason Menzies is at war with Balthazar is that Balthazar killed their father and took up the mantle of godhood (he is the god of murder after all). Menzies could be bitter and declared war on Balthazar and possibly also bitter at being rejected from the pantheon. What better way to take revenge on them than to side with Dhuum and Abbadon? Of course, as I said before this is purely speculation and will most likely later be proven wrong.

well like i said, i don’t know that much about lore of the gods (in fact i hadn’t heard of menzies until a few days back, and only because someone tried to compare him to mad king thorn), but i felt like commenting anyway :P

Menzies is pretty well an unknown, yes, but at the same time we don’t know a whole lot about the gods themselves, oddly enough. We don’t know their personalities or their histories beyond wide, sweeping statements such as “Balthazar is lord of fire and war” and “Grenth locked Dhuum into the underworld”

We’d probably be a lot more aware of who they are and what they do if we ever interacted with them properly, but even in the first game when we resealed dhuum in the underworld, or became avatars of the different gods (which we can even still do with Melandru) We never spoke directly to them. I have a theory about the silence of the gods, but that doesn’t go in this thread.

As for Menzies, well, my take on it is that the gods of Tyria are a group that splintered off from a pantheon in another world; Balthazar carrying his father’s head suggests a pitched battle, and it’s quite possible that a divine conflict rendered the world uninhabitable, so they took humans to Tyria to start over. Under this theory, Menzies is still operating from the old world, but given that he wasn’t invited along with everybody else, he’s understandably trying to get into one of the seats he’s most likely going to be able to hold.

Anything could honestly be possible, with the fact that we know barely anything about the mists, how they work, or any background of that. And honestly I think it’s best to keep that mystery there, because when all questions are answered, there is no more reason for us nerds to discuss them :P

That being said, the world he came from would have to have been the Fissure of Woe, and it became uninhabitable for Humanity so he brought them over :P Would be a cool back story.

Except that the Fissure of Woe (aka Realm of War) isn’t a world. It’s a realm – like the Heart of the Mists, the Rift, the Underworld, the Realm of Torment, or WvW areas. It’s a large piece of land in the Mists, where spirits roam. Part of the afterlife.

Yet Tyria is also a part of the Mists, somehow. We don’t know how they are connected due to the fact that we know Tyria has some sort of spacial relation with a moon, sun, stars, etc… it could be said that Tyria is the real world, and the Mists are connected to it. Though for all we know Tyria could just be a very large realm within the Mists and the objects that we know as outer space on earth could merely be illusions, or perhaps views into the other realms within the Mists. This is all theoretical, but as of this point in time, I have figured nothing out as to Tyria’s connection to the Mists except that much of it is through portals, and furthermore, that we know of, none of the races seem to have found a way to travel in space (unless you believe the crater in Fireheart to be a satellite).

My understanding of the mists is that the entire place is everything. It’s the multiverse; each little bit of the different worlds and realms we have to look at? Those are all part of the mists. Tyria is part of the mists. the underworld, the fissure of woe, everywhere else, mists. The land from beyond the keyboard, that grey bleak thing known as Real Life? Theoretically, also part of the mists.

Not really that important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s something that I felt should have been mentioned.

The true nature of the Mists is kind of hard to understand. In one view, it’s kind of like outer space. In another, it’s another dimension entirely. Given the norn quests, I’m inclined to think it’s a mix of them – another dimension existing at the same time and place as Tyria’s dimension but also elsewhere as well – it is also connected heavily to Tyria’s dimension. Think of the Mists and Tyria as two layers of a sheet, perfectly lined up and laying atop of each other – that’s kind of how I view them. But the Mists is more of the space between several sheets of paper which make up multiple dimensions (which we know exist via the asura Infinity Ball storyline, and possibly World versus World).

Though yet, the fact that there are things which are not pure copies but merely fragments suggest otherwise. TBH, I don’t think there is a set definition of what the Mists are or whether or not Tyria is part of it – we just know that Tyria’s touching it, and a bridge can be made in the form of portals – from either side, if the distance is thin enough (which is increasing in number – these weaknesses in the “barrier,” as it’s called, between Tyria and the Mists).

Well, in reality what is after death, it’s something that we on earth could never answer with 100% certainty, so why should the situation be any different in Tyria.

The fact that ArenaNet have always referred to Menzies as Balthazar’s half-brother is rather striking – if they had just said brother, I might have argued for a non-literal interpreation (like they both sprang from the same primal stuff), but as it is it does invite questions regarding their parents, and I suspect that’s not really an accident.

As for Menzies, well, my take on it is that the gods of Tyria are a group that splintered off from a pantheon in another world; Balthazar carrying his father’s head suggests a pitched battle

This combined with the idea of half-brothers (likely one father, different mothers, though not necessarily) begins to sound a lot like a Greek/Near-Eastern ‘succession of the gods’ myth, with Balthazar in the Cronos/Zeus role of the son who rises up to overthrow his father and take his power. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this kind of story emerge in the future.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if ArenaNet muddies the waters a bit by suggesting that neither Balthazar nor Menzies is guiltless, even if Menzies is more the bad guy these days. After all, now we have more than just the worshipful human perspective, and GW2 has already gone some way to de-mystifying the Six Gods.

Narcemus.1348:

Well, in reality what is after death, it’s something that we on earth could never answer with 100% certainty, so why should the situation be any different in Tyria.

The fact Tyrians can travel to the afterlife. They know it exists. They’ve been there.

Yes, they know it exists, but they do not wholly understand it, which was my point