Guild Wars 2

I had some questions that may or may not ever be answerable given the story’s tendency to leave loose ends forever but anyway…

1. Was Balthazar impersonating Lazarus the entire time or was he the “fake aspect” that Caudecus gave Xera to ensure the real Lazarus did not return.

1a.If he was simply impersonating Lazarus then where are the “real” Lazarus aspects?
1b. Was Balthazar also the one taking in blood power at the end of the Xera raid?
1c. If Balth was the “fake” aspect then what happened to the other 4 parts of Lazarus? Did Balthazar simply subsume him and Lazarus cannot return anymore? (unless the 1/5th of him that is left is enough)

2. If Jormag is dead/dormant, what happens to the Norn? After all they had some prophecy about whoever broke the tooth could defeat Jormag. (Also did anyone else not find it annoying the Norn aren’t going crazy and mobilizing the moment they saw the dent in the tooth?)

Observations:

In-game vs lore power level discrepancy

The ingame power level not remotely matching the lore power level leaves the player feeling quite unsatisfied. You cannot hype up some creature to be a great threat if you can kill it with auto attacks later on. Part of this is Anet’s severe failure to give a sense of progression and difficulty as the player moves further into vanilla maps. It is not really until HoT or Living World maps that players are forced to improve. This failure to push skill increase leads to the creation of “weak” bosses that do no fit their lore reputations.

Balthazar current state is ridiculously weak by any God standards. We have two Gods to stack him up against.

Dhuum is a fallen God who constantly threatened Grenth’s grasp on the Underworld. To subdue him we had to do all this dirty work just to save the Reapers from getting overrun and then have them help us restrain Dhuum. Now it can be argued that Dhuum may be stronger than current Balth as Dhuum gains strength everytime things die in the UW.

Abaddon is the other severely weakened and chained God we have faced. He has been tormented and broken for ages that he doesn’t even have a real body anymore. He is probably the lowest point of a former God we have seen and yet current Balth appears to be weaker than him. I legit cannot tell if that is the real impression we should be getting or if Anet just had to weaken the encounter by that much because of in-game unskillful-ness. I mean atleast give his dog a bigger model or something…

Balth’s mercenaries

Why does the God of War need mercenaries and Inquest to help him when he can just walk into Divinity’s Reach and have the whole city bowing to him? Regardless of his current power level, he is still one of the Six and would be able to break off a large portion to do his bidding. Unless Anise/Jenna being another God is proven to be real, the path of action he has undertaken makes little sense.

General story direction

It appears to me Anet wants to wrap up this dragon stuff as quickly as possible. It was a great idea for the next “big bads” (after all what is going to easily top defeating a God in Nightfall?) but they have failed to make compelling villains of the dragons. Mostly by choice, the dragons being this force of nature type of enemy leaves no interesting motivations or grey decisions to be made. On the other hand. their attempts at alternate villains like Scarlet have gone out of control into the realm of lunacy with super-genius intellect and ability to make alliances between vastly different groups. In my view, the writers are now pulling from old lore and will build from there. GW1 lore is not a masterpiece by any means but at least the world was consistent. Nothing was super over the top that would break immersion or story telling. Indeed that is why I think they resorted to Lazarus and the mursaat to end this dragon stuff faster. The Mursaat storyline is relatively fleshed out and their motivations well known. They used this as a crutch to provide instant intrigue into the story. I see a similar situation occurring in the near future with the mentions of Palawa Joko.

The most logical thing I can think of for Balth’s mercs is that he needed that bloodstone. That was goal one. That was literally the first thing (that we know of) that he did. The only realistic way to get access to it was to disguise himself as someone who… was supposed to have access to it. I.e. a mursaat. The White Mantle, as shown in GW1 have a bit of a problem with the regular human gods and the worship thereof (think back on their attack on the Temple of Ages) so showing up as himself would have elicited hostility. So, be a mursaat to accrss the stone and recruit White Mantle, and have a solid contract for additional non fanatical forces.

As for why he KEPT that facade, I don’t know. After he got the bloodstone, he could have easily just disappeared as Lazarus and reappeared later in DR as balth and gained plenty of followers. We’d all wonder where Lazarus went, but that’s not really Balthazar’s problem. He’d have lost his white mantle followers, but gained a lot of other Human ones

The implementation of the Gods is interesting considering our understanding of the Elder Dragons.

From Hidden Arcana:

Ogden Stonehealer: The Elder Dragons may be as old as the world itself. They’re more than creatures.
Ogden Stonehealer: They’re part of nature’s workings. They rise and fall on a cycle that spans millennia.
Ogden Stonehealer: Much of what we know about them comes from a document written by the first humans to walk the face of Tyria: the Scroll of the Five True Gods.
Ogden Stonehealer: It is written in an ancient dialect, therefore it is subject to interpretation.
Ogden Stonehealer: In it, the gods revealed the names of the Elder Dragons: Mordremoth, Kralkatorrik, Jormag, Zhaitan, and Primordus.
Ogden Stonehealer: There is one other name listed, but it is illegible, lost to time. I suspect this is the deep-sea dragon.
Ogden Stonehealer: The gods expound on how Tyria’s health is tied directly to them. This portion is somewhat abstract, however.
Ogden Stonehealer: There are varied theories on what it means, but I believe it refers to the natural balance of magic.
Ogden Stonehealer: Too much magic, and the world spins out of control. Too little, and it crumbles into darkness.

Balthazar knew full well what consequences were implied by his actions against Primordius. Still, he clearly states that Tyria is not of his concern. He doesn’t plan to going back to Tyria anytime soon, all he wants is powering himself by various means. Hence why he did not try to raise legions of Tyrians.

When measuring power levels of gods we have encountered or seen the effects of, I think we need to take into account their actual levels of effecting the world. Abaddon was way more powerful than just a chained broken giant shooting purple beams, he was halfway in pulling the entire world into the realm of torment when we got to finish him. That is pretty godly in my opinion. Menzies and Dhuum control their own little private armies/creatures, but they rarely inflict any massive environmental change. (Someone correct me if I am wrong, I havent frequented the Underworld or Fissure of Woe enough to remember).

Balthazar right now does feel really worthless in comparison at this time, but consider that maybe he is just warming up, or, given that he is mostly uninterested in the world as long as he gets enough magic from it to repower himself, he might not be unleashing his full potential. It is a gods perogative to underestimate everything mortal to the point of not even swating a mildly annoying fly. Not when there are more important things to worry about, something the fly wouldnt even be able to comprehend.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

1. Was Balthazar impersonating Lazarus the entire time or was he the “fake aspect” that Caudecus gave Xera to ensure the real Lazarus did not return.

From my understanding, he was impersonating Lazarus – based on Bauer’s journals, Balthazar appeared before Bauer even before the second raid had taken place (thus before Xera could perform the ritual to try to bring back Lazarus). Balthazar would not have been taking on power at the end of the third raid, as that ritual was meant to restore Lazarus so unless Balthazar just sat and watched then teleported in at the exact right moment with the right flair (something that’d be hard to do, especially when it’s unclear Lazarus wouldn’t have resurrected as he had in the past without all his aspects), he couldn’t have done so.

We do not know where Lazarus’ four aspects are… and we cannot even be certain that the ritual even failed. Lazarus could still be out there.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

2. If Jormag is dead/dormant, what happens to the Norn? After all they had some prophecy about whoever broke the tooth could defeat Jormag. (Also did anyone else not find it annoying the Norn aren’t going crazy and mobilizing the moment they saw the dent in the tooth?)

Presumably we’ll find out next episode. The end of episode 5 talked about talking with Braham so… we’ll likely be going to the Shiverpeaks in Episode 6 and something will happen to draw us to the Crystal Desert.

And if you talk to Taimi at the end of the last instance, she says that the norn have been celebrating non-stop since Braham broke the tooth while Braham (as said in episode 4) takes an exploratory team (dubbed Destiny’s Edge) up north to see what damage they could do to Jormag.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Balthazar current state is ridiculously weak by any God standards. We have two Gods to stack him up against.

Balthazar’s weakened state is actually part of the lore. This isn’t really a discrepancy between lore and game, as it’s a plot point. Balthazar had been weakened by an unknown group. This is the entire purpose of Balthazar’s return to Tyria – he’s after power. First from the bloodstone, then from the Elder Dragons.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

*Abaddon is the other severely weakened and chained God we have faced. He has been tormented and broken for ages that he doesn’t even have a real body anymore. He is probably the lowest point of a former God we have seen and yet current Balth appears to be weaker than him. I legit cannot tell if that is the real impression we should be getting or if Anet just had to weaken the encounter by that much because of in-game unskillful-ness. I mean atleast give his dog a bigger model or something…

Actually, Abaddon would be greater than Balthazar’s current state because Abaddon had spent the entirety of 1,075 years regaining power slowly, and had been greatly empowered by Varesh’s three rituals

We could only ever even face off against Abaddon in the first place because of the five gods’ blessing, and could only defeat him because of the chains Balthazar had forged. Without either, we would never have stood a chance.

On top of that, keep in mind that while physically weakened due to chains and god blessings, Abaddon was reshaping the very world of Tyria while still chained up. That is insane power there, far greater than even the Elder Dragons who can only reshape things around them let alone in another plain of existence.

Furthermore, it’s heavily hinted that Balthazar had lost his divinity – putting him in the same state as Dhuum (usurped but not killed like Abaddon was), but where Dhuum regains power from nearby deaths Balthazar had to absorb bloodstone magic and later Elder Dragon magic. So even ignoring combat capabilities, Abaddon would be greater just by the fact he was still a full fleshed god.

Theoretically, Dhuum as he just broke free and Balthazar after absorbing a portion of two Elder Dragons’ magic and one full bloodstone would be on par. And we never fought that Balthazar.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

*Why does the God of War need mercenaries and Inquest to help him when he can just walk into Divinity’s Reach and have the whole city bowing to him? Regardless of his current power level, he is still one of the Six and would be able to break off a large portion to do his bidding.

I want to know this myself.

The whole “pretending to be Lazarus” on top of “hiring mercs/using White Mantle” is more than just a little odd. We know what he was doing with them, but why go after those and not use his faithful, if he’s as uncaring about the world as he claims to be?

What’s Balthazar’s opinion of zealotry? I ask because some random merc chatter in Draconis Mons seems to suggest that Balth discarded the White Mantle because of their fanaticism. True, those mercs could have been referring to the Mantle’s devotion to the mursaat, specifically, and not the human gods, which is why Balth got rid of them. But what if Balthazar disdains zealotry as a whole, even in his name? What if he no longer wishes to be worshipped, at least until he can accomplish his goal of regaining his power? It might explain why he didn’t go to Divinity’s Reach.

I’m also thinking about it. The “pretending to be Lazarus” thing makes sense… well at least at the beginning to get close to the Bloodstone and its magic.

After he got the magic, he could have dropped the act but instead decides to cause a schism in the White Mantle, just to get a few fanatics, well I guess that he didn’t expect to cause a schism but to make the whole Mantle following him. And then the zealots seemed to be too troublesome or were close to discovering his real identity. He then hired mercs and imprisoned and killed White Mantle members.

The moment where he discarded the mantle should have been the moment to drop the disguise. And Marjory shouldn’t be the reason to keep the disguise.

So why did he kept the Lazarus disguise? The only reason I can imagine is that he feared to get spotted by the one who usurped him/took his magic.

I dont think we can answer that question at this point. He was a god and had his scripture but it actually lacks the usual rhetorics about worship.

“Lift up thy weapons. For you are my soldiers, and must you be steadfast, strong, and brave of heart. They who neither hesitate nor stumble shall be rewarded. Then shall you have glory. Then shall your deeds be remembered for eternity.”

This is mostly just about fighting, not fighting for a holy cause or zealotry. But even so it is pointless to debate at this point since he seems to have undergone some character arc with the whole “There is no Honor in War” mindset.

@Corax: I can’t think of any instance where Balthazar or his followers talk about zealotry. I caught the end of that merc conversation (I really wish they’d make those lines show up in the chat box because it’s hard to catch them when you don’t know where the speakers are), but devs did state that he intended to use the full White Mantle (never explaining why) and hadn’t anticipated Caudecus not following him (despite instantly calling him a heretic, apparently). A letter in the mercenary camp said that the mercenaries were ordered to imprison the White Mantle to prevent an uprising when they figure it out that he wasn’t really Lazarus.

But yeah, why keep the Lazarus disguise indeed. Only explanation I can see would be to have Marjory return and have a grand reveal via conflict all the same. Which is bad writing, tbh, because you’re ignoring realism for rule of cool.

I’m not so sure the humans would make as useful an ally as the mercenaries will:

• Humans are just one of the major races. Mercenaries can come from all races, so a much larger pool of potential soldiers.
• How many humans would eventually follow Balthazar? He is just one of the six gods, I don’t imagine all followers of the other gods would just follow him immediately.
• Jennah probably can’t put all her soldiers behind Balthazar. The Centaurs are still a threat, and the human kingdom aligning itself with such a powerful being could endanger the treaty with the Charr.
• If Balthazar’s goals or his means to achieve those goals are not in the interest of humans, his group of followers could turn on him/abandon him. Mercenaries would stay as long as he pays them and they think they are on the winning side.
• Balthazar probably wouldn’t need to explain as much about his goals to mercenaries (‘do your job, get paid, don’t ask questions’) as he would to loyal followers. Only religious fanatics would blindly follow orders without questioning them. This means that using mercenaries enables Balthazar to keep his intentions and actions secret for a longer time.

As far as his disguise goes, a disguise can have multiple uses, like pretending to be someone else or to hide one’s true identity. Balthazar pretended to be Lazarus to gain access to his resources, but perhaps also to hide his true intentions from the world. Even after discarding the White Mantle and the revelation that ‘Lazarus’ was an imposter, the disguise still had purpose ad it hid Balthazar’s true identity and left us none the wiser to his real intentions.

What is more fascinating, is that if he had been successful in his plan, to the eyes of the Tyrians, everything would have been done by Lazarus. The impression I have is that his fight against “Them” is on some other plane, and his return to Tyria was to merely regain powers, and return the fight against “them” without being noticed.
. Visibly he wanted to hide his weakened state from humans. What is expected of a God is that he has powers, he could not present himself in that state, and if he were subjected to some trial and fail, to suffer immense shame. … However I find this excessively “Deus ex machina”, although in the chapter in Bloodstone Fen, he eliminated soldiers from the Caudecus with fire, which indicated that the Anet already planned Balthazar there. …

My wishful thinking:

Here’s a lot of potential for Rytlock secret, and whoever “Balthazar” struggles, to have any connection, the story would be very interesting if you follow that line in the future, For some reason Balthazar and Rytlock do not want the Tyrians to know what’s going on in the Mists, although a new “apocalyptic plot” will be repetitive.

Inc.4753:

I’m not so sure the humans would make as useful an ally as the mercenaries will:

• Humans are just one of the major races. Mercenaries can come from all races, so a much larger pool of potential soldiers.
• How many humans would eventually follow Balthazar? He is just one of the six gods, I don’t imagine all followers of the other gods would just follow him immediately.
• Jennah probably can’t put all her soldiers behind Balthazar. The Centaurs are still a threat, and the human kingdom aligning itself with such a powerful being could endanger the treaty with the Charr.
• If Balthazar’s goals or his means to achieve those goals are not in the interest of humans, his group of followers could turn on him/abandon him. Mercenaries would stay as long as he pays them and they think they are on the winning side.
• Balthazar probably wouldn’t need to explain as much about his goals to mercenaries (‘do your job, get paid, don’t ask questions’) as he would to loyal followers. Only religious fanatics would blindly follow orders without questioning them. This means that using mercenaries enables Balthazar to keep his intentions and actions secret for a longer time.

It seems we have a disconnect about how venerated the Six are. I believe Balthazar supersedes Jennah’s authority with most humans. Only a few worship specific sects, most humans follow all Six gods. Even then Balthazar could deceive the followers of the rest by claiming he would call the other Gods once his goals were accomplished. No one would question Balthazar’s motives lest they be branded a heretic.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Inc.4753:

I’m not so sure the humans would make as useful an ally as the mercenaries will:

• Humans are just one of the major races. Mercenaries can come from all races, so a much larger pool of potential soldiers.
• How many humans would eventually follow Balthazar? He is just one of the six gods, I don’t imagine all followers of the other gods would just follow him immediately.
• Jennah probably can’t put all her soldiers behind Balthazar. The Centaurs are still a threat, and the human kingdom aligning itself with such a powerful being could endanger the treaty with the Charr.
• If Balthazar’s goals or his means to achieve those goals are not in the interest of humans, his group of followers could turn on him/abandon him. Mercenaries would stay as long as he pays them and they think they are on the winning side.
• Balthazar probably wouldn’t need to explain as much about his goals to mercenaries (‘do your job, get paid, don’t ask questions’) as he would to loyal followers. Only religious fanatics would blindly follow orders without questioning them. This means that using mercenaries enables Balthazar to keep his intentions and actions secret for a longer time.

It seems we have a disconnect about how venerated the Six are. I believe Balthazar supersedes Jennah’s authority with most humans. Only a few worship specific sects, most humans follow all Six gods. Even then Balthazar could deceive the followers of the rest by claiming he would call the other Gods once his goals were accomplished. No one would question Balthazar’s motives lest they be branded a heretic.

I think he still has a point though. Most humans in Tyria WOULD want to follow Balthazar over Jenna, but would likely have the sense to know that it would doom the last remaining human city in Tyria.
Their devotion to Balthazar does not negate the fact that the humans are besieged on all sides by centaur and white mantle. They’re not just going to up and leave the defense and follow Balthazar and let DR get trampled. So, the “only human” recruitment pool is still awfully small. Mercenaries from ALL races is a much better force.

/reply Squee

Idk, I still disagree. Balth could easily make a false promise that he will trample all the human enemies once his objectives were completed. He has already shown willingness to use some of his power to help others if it gets him closer to his ultimate goals (saving Aurene). His presence itself would sprout a healthy faction of zealots within the city that would reinforce his rule.

Assuming it really is Balthazar. I know, I know, tinfoil hat. It just… seems so unplausible.

Was on vacation so I only played it now. That reveal was…

LEFT FIELD —> REVEAL

Yep that is where it came from. It seems like they are going completely against the original plans now. They distanced the lore of GW2 as much as they could from Nighfall and it’s focus on the human gods, even saying they are basically gone. And now they are back. Don’t get me wrong, I think that side of the lore is more interesting than the endless debates about dragon magic. It just kind of came out of nowhere. Or was there any build up that in hindsight was hinting as Balthazar?

BuddhaKeks. You’re being too generous with saying it came out of left field.

The only thing that hinted at it being Balthazar pretending to be Lazarus was Lazarus’ heavy use of fire magic. But even then… Marjory said she sensed death from him, right? And in GW1, Lazarus was an elementalist alongside a necromancer (at different points in time) so… yeah, the only “hint” was buried by apparent red herrings.

I think IMO that the fact that Balthazar did not come to DR and the fact that he had Lyss Mirror to hide his identity are related somehow…maybe he is being help to recover his divinity, with conditions of not interfering with humanity?

But if that is true that would bring more question of how many of the Gods are hidden in plain sight and why? etc…

To be honest I haven’t been excited about the Lore and Story of GW since Nightfall, Abaddon, Dhuun and even Menzies even though we never got to face him, I always wondered what type of Pact/Allegiance did that unholy trinity had, that they assisted one another constantly! They remind me a lot of the Lovecraft Elder Gods in how they always seem to be unknowable and made you feel so insignificant in the grand scale of things.

I’m really happy with how this turn out cant wait for LS to continue!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Marjory said she sensed death from him, right?

Did she? I thought she said something along the lines of being interested in the fact that he came back from the dead. Not that he did, as it turns out.

perilisk.1874:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Marjory said she sensed death from him, right?

Did she? I thought she said something along the lines of being interested in the fact that he came back from the dead. Not that he did, as it turns out.

This is what the conversation looks like.

<Character name>: What are you doing? He absorbed the Bloodstone’s power. We obviously can’t just easily put him down if his story doesn’t check out.
Marjory Delaqua: He’s touched death, Commander, and now he’s back… There’s something… The necromancer in me wants to find out more.
Marjory Delaqua: And…who knows?

Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Vigil

Ngeluz.4860:

I think IMO that the fact that Balthazar did not come to DR and the fact that he had Lyss Mirror to hide his identity are related somehow…maybe he is being help to recover his divinity, with conditions of not interfering with humanity?

Just having a good laugh imagining Lyssa saying : “Balthazar, I will help you restore your divinity. Just don’t not interfere with any humans. But you can totally blow their planet to pieces by killing two elder dragons at once though.”

Ider.1276:

Ngeluz.4860:

I think IMO that the fact that Balthazar did not come to DR and the fact that he had Lyss Mirror to hide his identity are related somehow…maybe he is being help to recover his divinity, with conditions of not interfering with humanity?

Just having a good laugh imagining Lyssa saying : “Balthazar, I will help you restore your divinity. Just don’t not interfere with any humans. But you can totally blow their planet to pieces by killing two elder dragons at once though.”

“Lyssa told me not to interfere with humans, but if I blow their planet to pieces by killing two elder dragons at once, I’m not technically interfering with humans. Directly, anyway. She might not agree, but by the time she reacts, I’ll have my powers back, so if she throws a tantrum or two I can live with that!”

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BuddhaKeks. You’re being too generous with saying it came out of left field.

The only thing that hinted at it being Balthazar pretending to be Lazarus was Lazarus’ heavy use of fire magic. But even then… Marjory said she sensed death from him, right? And in GW1, Lazarus was an elementalist alongside a necromancer (at different points in time) so… yeah, the only “hint” was buried by apparent red herrings.

And apperently Anet thought this fire magic hint would have been enough to hint at Balthazar, which isn’t since Lazarus also was, like you said, and Ele in GW1. ( yes they said in the guild chat that this was a hint to Balthazar. )

For the use of fire to be a hint the fire should have been a different color like the divine fire from Season 2. ( so we could have been speculating if that abnormal fire color would have been due to the absorption of the bloodstone-detonation or some other means )

On the Balthazar hint- the sense I got from the PoI, with the way they talked about small hints, is that they’re trying to avoid another ‘twist’ becoming popularly accepted in advance. I think they over-corrected towards obscure this time, but all the same, it’s a reasonable concern to have- at the glacial pace the plot moves, while the LS model also denies the opportunity for hefty chunks to come out at once, even a minor concrete hint will almost certainly be dissected in full by the time that the next release comes (never mind the reveal), and the low standard of evidence our community requires for theorycrafting means that the twist will be stumbled on, well-publicized, and accepted as probable fact by a portion of the playerbase before the devs can deliver their climactic reveal. As it stands, it happened anyway- WP was speculating on it as early as March- but it sounds like that has more to do with the leaks than the hints.

On mercenaries- I find it interesting to note that he didn’t draw from all races. The mercenaries are exclusively human and charr, with the Inquest forming their own bubble enclave in a different part of the cavern. That might be a result of him prioritizing the races with a standing military- appropriate for a god of war- but at the very least it suggest he didn’t just pick a guild up off the streets in LA. I don’t actually expect the devs to ever give them more of a treatment than plot convenience canon fodder, but there’s room for me to be pleasantly surprised.

The motive the mercs state is hard to take at face value, though. Balthazar wants troops loyal to gold, not faith… first off, that begs the question of where the gold came from- maybe all those donations from GW1?- but it also doesn’t square well with our view of the Six. Balthazar might not have been encouraging blind fanaticism, but he certainly seemed to court followers- in fact, just judging from the Scriptures, he was the most indiscriminate about it. Dwayna and Lyssa and Grenth handpicked individuals, Melandru forcefully converted a tribe that wronged her, but Balthazar laid claim to an entire army.

I don’t buy that the humans are too imperiled for it, either. There’s been several indications over the years that Kryta is moving troops away from the centaur war, and the patch notes said the Mantle who followed Caudecus have been handily mopped up and dispersed.

The idea that he might not want his followers to realize he’d become something less than they’d expected seems logical, but it doesn’t satisfy. It’s not a very godly thing to be worried about, especially in a setting that’s never pretended gods are powered by their worshipers, and it has an element of caution and nervousness that doesn’t square with what we see him do in the final instance. I like Corax’s idea better, that he, and maybe the rest of the Six, are burned out on the whole worship thing. It’d fit with the previous explanations for their absence, which suggested that they felt they were causing humans more harm than good, and it’d also fit the new Balthazar out to destroy the world. If you’re still feeling any twinge of doubt, guilt, or shame, having your loyal, misguided followers help you kill them all isn’t nearly as comfortable as working alongside your sworn enemies and sellswords who’re only out for a profit. On the bigger picture, I think it also makes for a much more interesting character. What becomes of a god who no longer wishes to be idolized?

Regarding the mercenaries’ “loyalties” – while two conversing charr do talk about how they think Balthazar hired them because they won’t get “weepy” over being abandoned, there is this letter found near Calamity (de facto leader of the (human?) mercenaries on Draconis Mons) which indicate that the mercenaries are certainly trying to curry Balthazar’s favor.

Also gives an interesting bit of easily overlooked lore – Balthazar apparently “lost” a dagger of his.

“1. Was Balthazar impersonating Lazarus the entire time or was he the “fake aspect” that Caudecus gave Xera to ensure the real Lazarus did not return. "

No…. Man have you done the 1st chapter? Balthazar used the mirror to imitate Lazarus. He was not in Tyria from more than 1000 years, how could he know that Lazarus would be so hated in Tyria? Gods, as someone said- Kas or Jory- anyway said that Gods think in another way than we- npcs or pc think. They are different.

“1a.If he was simply impersonating Lazarus then where are the “real” Lazarus aspects?"

Perhaps he consumed them to gain more power. And if it would change him into Lazarus, the fact that he used mirror of Lyssa would be trash, but it’s not. So:
1) aspects were destroyed by Balthazar, or
2) Balthazar consumed them.

And the real aspect- the 5th aspect is on our hands, so it can’t be even possible to resurrect Lazarus now.

“1b. Was Balthazar also the one taking in blood power at the end of the Xera raid?”

Maybe… I doubt Balthazar will say us anything about him and what he was doing. He is mysterious and cruel.

“1c. If Balth was the “fake” aspect then what happened to the other 4 parts of Lazarus?
Did Balthazar simply subsume him and Lazarus cannot return anymore? (unless the 1/5th of him that is left is enough)"

I already answered this question.

“2. If Jormag is dead/dormant, what happens to the Norn? After all they had some prophecy about whoever broke the tooth could defeat Jormag. (Also did anyone else not find it annoying the Norn aren’t going crazy and mobilizing the moment they saw the dent in the tooth?)”

When they will try to go after Jormag they will be disappointed and if they will wanna come closer to him they will freeze. So I expect we will come to Shiverpeaks and check Jormag. But not fight with him, perhaps with the one of his champions- Drakkar?

“*Balth’s mercenaries*

Why does the God of War need mercenaries and Inquest to help him when he can just walk into Divinity’s Reach and have the whole city bowing to him? Regardless of his current power level, he is still one of the Six and would be able to break off a large portion to do his bidding. Unless Anise/Jenna being another God is proven to be real, the path of action he has undertaken makes little sense."

I hate this theory that Jennah and Anise are Lyssa… Anyway Balthazar used the mirror of Lyssa so that would be stupid that Jennah or Anise would give it to him. That sounds ridiculous. When you can make the giant shield it DOESN’T mean that someone is a God. That means someone studied the mesmer magic the whole life and it shows that the QUEEN can really protect her people from any attacks.

Arden.7480:

And the real aspect- the 5th aspect is on our hands, so it can’t be even possible to resurrect Lazarus now.

Not necessarily.

Lazarus showed up before Justiciar Naveed to personally collect his final aspect during GW1. This means that Lazarus can exist without all aspects joined together. This isn’t a case of Exodia from Yu-Gi-Oh where if you don’t have all cards you just simply cannot summon Exodia at all. This is closer to Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, who though split himself into eight pieces, was able to exist individually as each one.

I am not sure about it. Caudecus’ words showed that “Lazarus” is an imposter and I think Caudecus is right that without 5th aspect Lazarus can’t be ressurected.

But well there is a possibility…. if it would be similar to Voldemort that would be ‘wow’. I hope we will have a lot of secrets to be revealed in ep6 and in the next expansion. We have so many questions and we need answers for them.

Anyway I like it.

Read the letters in that instance, and you’d see that Caudecus was under this impression because of Justiciar Bauer’s letters. However, Bauer’s journal shows himself to be a true believer of the Unseen Ones, unlike his letters to Caudecus, indicating that he lied to Caudecus (we never did confirm if that artifact was genuine, one more plot point overlooked). He even remarks having personally met “Lazarus” – oddly, before the raid on the Stronghold of the Faithful thus before the ritual to revive Lazarus.

If that’s not an error in chronology, then Bauer had been following Balthazar from the beginning, lied to both Xera and Caudecus, and seeded his journal with praises of the Unseen Ones for curious onlookers while being a “heathen” and traitor to the White Mantle from the get go.

And since the liar Bauer is the source of the claim that Lazarus could not be resurrected without all aspects, there’s reason to suspect that claim isn’t true. Especially since we’ve seen it happen in the past.

That actually raises an interesting question…

What if “Justiciar Bauer” was Balthazar’s previous disguise all along?

Well that would fit into my old “lazarus is actually Bauer” theory (which I felt had good backing, alas), but I cannot see Balthazar as keeping a journal which would allow people to realize he was lying to Caudecus (as well as Xera) before his plans came to be. Especially if he at all paid attention to Caudecus’ cunning.

Furthermore, during the AMA (iirc it was then – if not during the Guild Chat?) Anet devs said that Balthazar wasn’t expecting Caudecus to schism the White Mantle but rather for Caudecus to fall in line beneath his “god”. If he were Bauer and exchanging those notes, he’d know then that Caudecus was far from devout and was very much power hungry – perhaps enough to fight a singular mursaat claiming godhood. It’d be very shoddy writing for Balthazar to have gotten to know Caudecus well enough, but still be surprised by his actions (shoddy writing on Balthazar’s part as he’d be handling the idiot ball – it’s about as bad as the Captain’s Council going “Scarlet attacked us once, so she won’t attack us again!”).

I don’t think it’s as much a question whether Lazarus could be revived without the 5th part, it’s more a question of could he survive long enough afterwards?

Lazarus had to re-split himself because the corrupted part turned his power on himself. Apparently just de- and reassembling himself wouldn’t be enough, else he could have been revived a few hundred years ago.

This leads me to the theory that something was needed to counteract the corrupted power, and apparently the White Mantle thought a massive boost of energy from the bloodstone would do just that.

For Lazarus to re-split himself and go into stasis, entrusting his life to the White Mantle even after Naveed’s betrayal, means to me his situation was very serious and that he was very weak after the events of The Justiciar’s End. Being revived with only 4/5 parts of his power would mean he would be revived even weaker (otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to hunt down Naveed and the others in the first place).

What would this mean for the current status of Lazarus? If the ritual took place, I’d say Lazarus is certainly dead now. Either he didn’t survive the ritual in the first place, died afterwards because of the effects of the corrupted aspect (given it’s months after the revival (or attempt thereto) and I don’t think he could survive that long), or Balthazar intervened and killed him.

If the ritual never took place (Balthazar might have intervened before the ritual) or failed but didn’t destroy Lazarus’ aspects, it becomes more interesting. If the aspects are still around somewhere then the ritual could be attempted again, either with or without the 5th aspect.

If they were destroyed, then we still have this line from Caudacus’ Journal:

Normally I’d simply destroy the original and be done, but I don’t want that mursaat’s essence near my home.

Caudacus doesn’t believe destroying the aspect will also destroy Lazarus’ essence. Now it’s not much to go on, but this is a reason to believe in the possibility that even if the aspects are destroyed the essences of Lazarus are still out there. It would be interesting to see what role those essences could still play, with or without Lazarus’ body (which as far as I know is still unaccounted for).

What the “corrupted part” was doing was turning his magic against himself. If he when resplitting had kept that corrupted part in a singular aspect, he would not want to revive himself with all five parts anyways.

If Bauer was not a lair in his journal about his praises of the Unseen Ones, he might have set Caudecus up giving that corrupted aspect to him while helping Xera revive Lazarus with 4 of him.

As to him not being able to survive without all his aspects, I doubt it. Naveed had been on the run for weeks perhaps longer and Lazarus did not seem weakened or desperate. He seemed very non-chalant about reclaiming his final aspect.

And I think Caudecus’ comment is not only further lack-of-knowledge but rather him saying something like “I’d kill the prisoner, but I don’t want to deal with the blood and body” – in this case, “essence” is just basically dead mursaat magic/soul/whatever that he doesn’t want lingering in his home and not something that can have any effect on anything.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If Bauer was not a lair in his journal about his praises of the Unseen Ones, he might have set Caudecus up giving that corrupted aspect to him while helping Xera revive Lazarus with 4 of him.

If it were that easy, though, I would’ve expected him to be revived much, much sooner. The fact that Xera had to go on an extended hunt for these things, and the dialogue around her search, suggests that Lazarus had been split for so long that most of the Mantle had forgotten he’d done it. Maybe they just couldn’t figure out the ritual to revive him sooner, but would Lazarus really have not left instructions?

If the twisted aspect was hindering him so badly like intended, and he was in immediate pain as well so that’s likely, then he might not have had time or concentration for leaving instructions. It’s also possible he did it without the White Mantle’s knowledge (I cannot imagine they’d not keep the relics in the most high of reverence if they had them at any point in the past).

While I see where you’re coming from, I got the impression that the relics were scattered and hidden. That’d require either A.) Lazarus sealing away one aspect of himself at a time, or B.) having agents to do the hiding for him. In the first case, if he was able to confine the corruption to a single aspect, it’d have been much simpler- ditch the corruption first, and then carry on in a diminished but healthy state. In the second, it doesn’t really matter if the minions were Mantle or not. If he had long enough to find them, explain what was happening, and instruct them on what to do, it’d seem odd to believe that he didn’t have the time to also instruct them on how to bring him back.

Personally, I suspect one of two things happened. Either he did leave instructions for the White Mantle, but they weren’t able to figure out how to manage them at the time- maybe he overestimated their ability to harness or manipulate bloodstones, given that shards were a component in the resurrection ritual and the Mantle didn’t start extracting them until the last few years; or, I believe more likely, he instructed them not to bring him back until certain conditions were met. Maybe he was aware they were struggling with the bloodstones and needed to give them time to figure things out, maybe an extended period of dormancy would’ve ameliorated the corruption somehow, or maybe he wanted to wait out the titans/Shining Blade/Elder Dragons. Regardless, I imagine that the Mantle leadership scattered the pieces for safekeeping, then proved too tight-lipped about what they’d done, and the secret eventually died with the last of them.

I wasn’t saying they weren’t scattered – the letters to Caudecus make that much pretty clear in that Xera had to go on a long journey to recover them after finding the first.

What I was saying is that because they were scattered, it’s very likely that Lazarus had re-split himself in a rush, thus not preparing White Mantle for reviving him, and therefore explaining why Xera had to go on a long journey to recover all of Lazarus’ parts in the first place as well as why some White Mantle – like Caudecus – did not know about Lazarus’ ability to exist without all aspects.

It’s possible that whatever the splitting process sought to achieve required the aspects to be reasonably widely separated in order to work. Lazarus might then have left instructions as to where the aspects should be placed, and that they should not be disturbed until the time was right. If this is the case, then Xera might have known exactly where each piece was supposed to be, but it might still require some significant effort to bring them all back together. particularly if the process required the aspects to be so widely spread that the White Mantle simply couldn’t garrison them all.

“Justiciar Caudecus, The Unseen Ones smile upon us. After years of searching, High Inquisitor Xera has found a lead on the refuge of our injured god, Lazarus. It would appear that, after he was betrayed by Justicar Naveed over two centuries ago, Lazarus was forced to re-split himself into aspects to contain the corruption. Once imbued into artifacts, these aspects were scattered across the Maguuma Jungle and sites sacred to our order. And it is now our charge to gather these aspects.”

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_of_Puppets

This is the first letter Esthel sent to Caudecus (that we have access to). Xera had to “find a lead” on where Lazarus left the relics. That indicates that the White Mantle had no idea of where the relics were, at least in modern times. It could be that the events of the War in Kryta (or later unknown events) had resulted in the White Mantle losing the knowledge, or that they never knew but Lazarus left hints in hopes they would find out. Either way there doesn’t seem to be a “wait until the time is right” situation.

However, the idea of the White Mantle losing the knowledge becomes unlikely given the second line in that letter:

“It would appear that, after he was betrayed by Justicar Naveed over two centuries ago, Lazarus was forced to re-split himself into aspects to contain the corruption.”

It would appear – meaning that they only just found out. Unless the entire situation of Lazarus’ actions in the Tarnished Coast and after were lost and forgotten, then the White Mantle never knew in the first place.

The third line does support the idea of lost knowledge, since the artifacts were “scattered across the Maguuma Jungle and sites sacred to [the White Mantle]”, but it could be that those who spread the artifacts were constructs or never survived spreading those artifacts so the White Mantle on a whole never got that knowledge.