Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

You’ve also ignored my previous point – the dragons aren’t even draining magic from Tyria at a rate that is greater than replenishment. It’s a pretty big stretch to say that they’re then able to drain the gods to almost nothing through some tenuous link to Tyria that probably doesn’t even exist.

Sorry I didn’t address this thought. Magic doesn’t seem like something organic that can grow and expand on it’s own, like a blood cell for instance. I feel that magic is replenished due to the Six’s connection to Tyria. They left the world, but still fill it with their magic in a way similar to how Regeneration boons refill player HP. Elder Dragons absorbed the world’s magic as they slept, and would take in a lot more when they came out of hibernation.

The Six and the Elder Dragons are the typical Ying and Yang. The Jedi and Sith. Republican and Democrat. Polar opposites, yet they bring balance to the whole. With the Commander slowly killing Elder Dragons one by one, the potential storylines to follow would be too much magic in the world.

Perhaps Lyssa took the form of Queen Jenna to observe this first hand? Kormir is the god of knowledge, so maybe she foresaw this and felt someone should go watch. Not Dwayna though, because she entranced Malchor and would probably be a distraction to humans if they kept killing themselves over her. Grenth is probably mad that Dwayna got his father killed, and will stay in the Underworld until maybe expansion 4. Melandru is just a female Trahearne, old and wise, but probably the less useful of the Six.

You’ve got one major issue with your theory:

Magic isn’t “replenished” at all, however. The Elder Dragons do not absorb magic while they sleep, they release magic while they sleep (or are dead), and take it in while they’re awake. The magic in Tyria itself changes, but the magic in Tyria + the Elder Dragons is stabilized. The only changes are, ultimately, location and form (corruptive versus not corruptive; in Elder Dragons versus in the world).

The Six Gods are not even native to Tyria, unlike the Elder Dragons, and only arrived for the very first time in the past couple thousand years. The Elder Dragons had already gone through at least two risings before then if we presume the Six Gods arrived during the last dragonrise (three if they came after). The jotun have records of “multiple rises” prior to the last one, which puts them with four+ rises in total, including the current one. Depending on whether you trust the Priory, or follow the history of Glint/Forgotten, that would mean the Elder Dragons are at least either 30,000 (10,000 year cycles) or at the very least 11,000 years old (3,000 year cycles – there is a third plausible cycle rate of 8,000 with latest one being only 3,000 thanks to Bloodstone creation and later manipulation).

In either case, the Elder Dragons are at least 10,000 years older on Tyria than the Six Gods.

And it’s yin yang not ying yang.

The reason why “too much magic” is a thing, aside from the Elder Dragon’s connection to The All (note: Priory and jotun say that the Elder Dragons are not those spheres but connected to them), is that six Elder Dragons’ worth of magic is simply too much burden for the world to bear (in fact, according to Taimi, three Elder Dragons’ worth of magic is too much to bear), not that the Elder Dragons are needed to get rid of an otherwise increasing amount of magic.

It should also be noted that until LS3, the only god to return to Tyria has been Dwayna – only Malchor fell in love with her at first sight and to such a degree. If any goddess would cause men to kill each other or themselves over her, it’d be Lyssa who is attributed as the goddess of love.

You bring up good points. I’ll have to go back and look further into the Dragons to see my thoughts on lore are still cannon.

For Malchor, I’m going off of memory here. He’s actually one of the few mortals that was able to see each of the gods. He sculpted all of them, and fell in love with Dwayna’s beauty over Lyssa. Being a mortal, he couldn’t handle being in a relationship with a god, and went insane. He and Dwayna had a child, Grenth, who later ascended to godhood.

For Queen Jenna being one of the Lyssa twins, or both taking turns being her, again it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. With how Lyssa is naturally, disguising herself as a mortal to help humanity can be cannon, and the real Queen Jenna could be in on the whole idea. Her extraordinary powers could be supplemented directly from Lyssa’s blessing, by bloodstone/keystone, or Lyssa might even step in at the right moments to cast powerful spells to protect the people.

Oh, it’s certainly possible. However, I think there are better explanations.

As I’ve noted previously, Jennah makes it clear that she’s made ‘preparations’. Now, if this storyline had happened in Rata Sum instead of Divinity’s Reach, people wouldn’t bat an eyelid – it would just be another asura device. People forget, however, that while humans don’t match asura in magitech, they do have their own ability to enchant magical devices, and they’re better at cooperating with one another than asura. To me, it’s hardly surprising that what the ruler of a powerful nation can do, in the heart of her capital city and after having made preparations expecting an attack, is greater than what the player character can do with battle magic that rarely takes more than a few seconds to prepare and execute.

Maybe PC mesmers and guardians have the potential to raise city domes too, if they had the luxury of spending a few months preparing the spell, and possibly a few magical devices or allied spellcasters available to augment it.

Natto.5819:

Sorry I didn’t address this thought. Magic doesn’t seem like something organic that can grow and expand on it’s own, like a blood cell for instance. I feel that magic is replenished due to the Six’s connection to Tyria. They left the world, but still fill it with their magic in a way similar to how Regeneration boons refill player HP. Elder Dragons absorbed the world’s magic as they slept, and would take in a lot more when they came out of hibernation.

Going into the Guild Wars lore, the actual source seems to have been the Bloodstones. After the modifications made by the gods, the Bloodstones were steadily releasing magic back into the world, but this was magic that was present in the world before the gods arrived. Eventually, this reached the point where there was enough magic to trigger the awakening of the dragons. None of this magic, however, was that of the gods themselves – while they may have invested some power into terraforming Tyria, the replenishment of magic after the Exodus was coming out of the bloodstones, not from the gods.

If there had been no intervention after that (the dragons had been left unopposed, and the bloodstones had been left in their ‘release magic’ mode) then it’s likely that the magic level of Tyria would have eventually settled to an equilibrium where the dragons consumed magic at the same rate as the bloodstones released it – until the bloodstones eventually ran out and the dragons consumed what was left until the magic level dropped below the threshold for them to return to hibernation.

“Preparations” could imply many things. Getting help from other mesmers or guardians in her court, tapping into the keystone, or even asking a god for divine blessings. But the writers decided to go with a god disguising himself to interact with humans. And with that, they opened the door to the possibility of the queen being fake too.

For the bloodstones being the magic battery that fills the world with magic, that would bring up more questions about the human gods and the Elder Dragons. If the dragons have been around for eons longer than the Six, what was their purpose? The Six gave magic to the world later on. If they didn’t come to Tyria, the Elder Dragons would have nothing to consume. Unless they consumed each other’s magic, which would be a silly direction for Anet to take the lore. Can you imagine each dragon sitting in a circle, endlessly taking from one and giving to the next?

Natto.5819:

For Queen Jenna being one of the Lyssa twins, or both taking turns being her, again it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. With how Lyssa is naturally, disguising herself as a mortal to help humanity can be cannon, and the real Queen Jenna could be in on the whole idea. Her extraordinary powers could be supplemented directly from Lyssa’s blessing, by bloodstone/keystone, or Lyssa might even step in at the right moments to cast powerful spells to protect the people.

The bold is honestly more reason for Jennah to not be Lyssa. Yes, Lyssa preferred living among mortals rather than above them… but those are the important, key words: rather than above them.

Pretending to be a monarch is every bit “above them”, even if not as much as a god would be.

When Lyssa pretended to be mortal, she was a commoner, or lower than that. If Lyssa were pretending to be human, it’d be more likely for her to be Anise or Livia (if not both if that one theory is right) than to be Jennah. It’d make far more sense for Lyssa to be Kasmeer than either Jennah or Anise had it not been for her actions in Taimi’s Pet Project.

And Jennah’s extraordinary powers have a multitude of explanations. Least of all the fact that major magical capabilities is not unique – even ignoring Xera who does far, far more in the raid than Jennah does in both novels and episode 4 combined, we have individuals like Sorcerer Lord Kree, Sybetha, Kitah, Lord Odran, Palawa Joko, Zoldark the Unholy, Livia, Magi Malaquire, Nola Sheppard, and Koro Sagewind who do presumably impossible (if not just simply improbable) feats before magic was so much more common in the open world.

You say making an illusion of an Elder Dragon, or a siege-repelling bubble around a city is an impossible feat for a mortal? To cite two powerful mesmers: Koro Sagewind and Kitah both (on clearly separate occasions) created a massive illusionary army. They died shortly after, mind, but mostly due to wounds from battle than creating the illusions. On a different occasion, Koro had created an illusion the size of the Eye of the North (which is about the size of the queen’s palace) without preparation and only went temporarily blinded.

All of that was before magic became as present as it is in the world.

Jennah’s feat are extraordinary, yes, but they are not outside the realm of non-amplified mortals.

Natto.5819:

For the bloodstones being the magic battery that fills the world with magic, that would bring up more questions about the human gods and the Elder Dragons. If the dragons have been around for eons longer than the Six, what was their purpose? The Six gave magic to the world later on. If they didn’t come to Tyria, the Elder Dragons would have nothing to consume.

The bloodstone was filled with magic from the world. The Six did not give any magic, they merely unlocked it.

Something drax forgot to mention was how the Elder Dragons also leak magic – so not only was there magic from the bloodstone draining into the world after the gods’ tampering, but there was magic from the Elder Dragons going back into the world too.

Besides that, the bloodstone was created from the “scraps” of magic left near the end of the previous dragon cycle, so there was more magic in the Elder Dragons than in the bloodstones.

The Elder Dragons would have woken up eventually with or without the gods. They likely would have merely slept longer, or not have as much magic to munch on, had it not been for the gods.

It makes sense for Lyssa to hide herself as the queen. rather than a peasant. Can you imagine the attention it would bring to have a mesmer peasant casting spells more powerful than the sitting monarch? At least as the queen, Lyssa doesn’t have to make excuses to hide her powers.

As for mortals using powerful spells, there are cases in lore that prove it to be true, but there’s also sacrifices. Without using alternative means to power up, mortals who push their magic beyond reason get hurt. Xera keeps coming up as more powerful than Queen Jenna. Not so. She’s just tapping into the bloodstones that were meant for Lazarus. When I watched the raid videos, the fight is one big illusion. Xera is larger than life, and the buildings physically changing is just another illusion.

Queen Jenna could very well be using a bloodstone or keystone to give her powers that extra kick, but there’s nothing to show her absorbing the bloodstone magics while she’s casting. It could be the reason why she doesn’t wear shoes, so she can absorb it through her feet. But still, there are also risks to absorbing and using a lot of bloodstone magic. Being a leader without an heir, I don’t think the storylines would have her risk her body until she gave birth to Logan’s child. Which leads to another reason why the real Queen Jenna is probably safe behind the scenes.

Side note – we’re getting Menzies related items, which could be a sign that Balthazar is still fighting with his brother. If that leads to FoW, the hype would be insane.

Isn’t Lyssa supposed to be chaotic and unpredictable? I don’t think it’d be easy to predict her acting in any specific way. She may have dressed as a peasant once, but that has literally no bearing on her future actions. She might disguise herself as a gerbil if it suits her mood.

But then, I still don’t think Jenna is Lyssa. The gods left ages ago, and she’s probably off doing whatever it is the gods are doing elsewhere. Balthazar came back because he’s not really a god anymore. That doesn’t mean the other gods are hiding about on Tyria also.

@Natto:

Talented spellcasters and would-be heroes coming from peasantry is a pretty common trope actually, and we have a number of such individuals in GW1 with such a background like Gwen, Shiro Tagachi, and even Adelbern grew up as a peasant. Nothing really ties royalty to powerful magic, so I’m not sure where you really get that it would make more sense for a queen to be a powerful spellcaster than a peasant.

As for “mortals who push their magic beyond reason get hurt” – change it to “push beyond their limit” and you’re correct. But the limit is much higher than you seem to take it for. With the exception of Koro going blind for a week after her illusion the size of Eye of the North, all cases of extremely powerful spellcasting situations were combat inflicted wounds, not backlashes from the spellcasting. And even then, there are many cases where such mortals do not get hurt – a good example being Nola Sheppard, who raised an massive undead army in a fit of rage, which is unheard of for a non-lich; her only injury was from Kieran knocking her out. Her sole injury was what Kieran inflicted on her.

@Squee: As far as I know, nothing ever calls Lyssa chaotic or unpredictable. If anything, she’s among the most stable of the gods.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Squee: As far as I know, nothing ever calls Lyssa chaotic or unpredictable. If anything, she’s among the most stable of the gods.

From the Nightfall manual:

“The patron goddess of Mesmers wears many masks, appearing in myriad forms. Patrons of the arts effusively praise her—particularly in the courts of wealthy Vabbi—but some fear her as a temperamental goddess. Behind her beautiful façade, some say, she maintains a deep communion with chaos. Displays of art and culture please her, but her wrath is terrible to behold. Her followers use her magic for illusion, trickery, and deception, twisting the magic of others to suit their own goals. By her whims, her enemies are brutalized by despair and hopelessness, while her beautiful followers are elevated to heights of rapture.”

Granted, the other two manuals don’t mention that side of her, but on the other hand the Nightfall manual is the only one to go into that much detail.

“Some say” leaves it to a lot of interpretation and could easily just be certain individuals saying “yeah, she’s chaotic”. The rest doesn’t really sound chaotic at all. Curiously, though the Nightfall manual focused on Elonian depictions (just as the Factions focused on Canthan depictions), we didn’t really see that come up in-game even in the heavily Lyssa-influenced Vabbi.

They’ve got temperamental, chaos, and whim, and nothing in there (or in any of the others) about being stable, let alone one of the most stable gods. Sure, it’s only how a portion of humanity views her- but aside from a single supposedly first-hand account, or maybe two, the only insight we have into Lyssa is the views of her followers. Given that, I think what “some say” deserves more weight than you’re giving it, even if it’s not necessarily right.

There is this statement, though and I would find it odd for a priest of Lyssa to contemplate the stillness of water if Lyssa is a primarily chaotic or whimsical goddess.

Further, water is often used in reference to mirrors for Lyssa – that is her tie as the now “goddess of water” after all – but this is only possible for calm, predictable, and stable waters. While mirrors may hold a strong mesmer link, it feels odd to relate stable water to chaotic god all the same, just for the sake of a reflection.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

There is this statement, though and I would find it odd for a priest of Lyssa to contemplate the stillness of water if Lyssa is a primarily chaotic or whimsical goddess.

Further, water is often used in reference to mirrors for Lyssa – that is her tie as the now “goddess of water” after all – but this is only possible for calm, predictable, and stable waters. While mirrors may hold a strong mesmer link, it feels odd to relate stable water to chaotic god all the same, just for the sake of a reflection.

That same priest says “chaos combats darkness”. Kind of an odd thing to say about a calm, not chaotic goddess.

Edit: I think the take away isn’t that lyssa is inherently chaotic or calm, but totally unpredictable. I see I originally said chaotic AND unpredictable and perhaps I was wrong to say chaotic. She could be calm when it suits her, or chaotic. But overall, she is wholly unpredictable.

Being “totally unpredictable” is being chaotic. If you’re just wrecking havoc all the time, that’s not being chaotic but destructive. Being chaotic means either having randomized/unpredictable patterns and behaviors.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Being “totally unpredictable” is being chaotic. If you’re just wrecking havoc all the time, that’s not being chaotic but destructive. Being chaotic means either having randomized/unpredictable patterns and behaviors.

Then the point still stands. She is unpredictable/chaotic. Even the sources who comment on her serenity also mention being chaotic. So, back to the original point, it would be a mistake to predict she would not pose as royalty if she felt it was necessary.

But, again, I don’t think she IS posing as Queen Jennah/ Anise/ my Miniature Chickenado or whatever the theory is. I’m just saying you can’t judge what she MIGHT do based on what she has done in the past.

But her past, combined with Anet writers, show that it’s entirely plausible that the gods left the human world hundreds of years ago, but decided to come back now that the Elder Dragons pose a threat.

Queen Jenna is powerful, but didn’t show her true power until just a couple of months ago because she had no choice. In lore, she could have protected herself, but instead called Logan to defend her. I take that as trying to hide her powers back then to avoid showing the world how powerful she is, which would make people wonder where she got all that magical strength from.

Side note, I’m told that I keep misspelling her name. No, I just refuse to add the “h”, because it makes me want to pronounce it. Just like with Cool Wip, it’s just a personal preference..

Anyone consider the thought that Lyssa might be both chaotic and calm at the same time? She is after all a twin goddess comprised of Ilya and Lyss.

Natto.5819:

Queen Jenna is powerful, but didn’t show her true power until just a couple of months ago because she had no choice. In lore, she could have protected herself, but instead called Logan to defend her. I take that as trying to hide her powers back then to avoid showing the world how powerful she is, which would make people wonder where she got all that magical strength from.

Besides the points that have already been raised, about the barrier being explicitly prepared in advance and the possibility of other spellcasters supporting it, there’s still the question of what a city-wide barrier would’ve actually done for Jennah at Ebonhawke. The Branded were already inside the city walls, and in any case, the bubble around Divinity’s Reach doesn’t seem to stop people moving in and out. It’s not like the charr were launching cannonballs or Kralkatorrik had stuck around to spit crystals.

Add to that the fact that it’s quite possible Jennah learned to be a better fighter because of the Ebonhawke incident. Keep in mind that she was only deemed old enough to take the throne four years before Kralkatorrik woke up. Depending on what the age of majority is in Kryta, that puts her at roughly around 20 then, and roughly around 30 now. A decade is plenty of time for a young woman to take a hard-learned lesson to heart and learn how to defend herself.

A lot of the Jennah theory of her being one of the Lyssa twins is due to the ironic turn of the events leading up to Zhaitan awaking. Without the Queen, Charr and Humanity would have still been fighting, which is an undeniable lore fact. Thus, Mainland Tyria would have been largely divided and the effort towards assembling the pact would have been more half-baked than it already was/is.

I don’t give much thought to the Theory, however the beauty of it is that Jennah has shown massive talent with her skills, as has Anise. The upcoming expansion to has a lot to do with Lyssa. Little GW2 screenshot for the GW1 Lore Fans.

Leak spoiler following: