Guild Wars 2

I should have posted this a lot earlier. I’m soon going to be in some RP in which players try to contact a ghost to learn more about his death. I’m not clear on what’s canon for how effective this can be. Alastia Crow in the human PS seems very chatty, but she’s recently dead. The ghosts of Ascalon seem to tread the same path each time they reform and not respond to what the living are saying.

This particular murdered man died twenty years ago. The people summoning him, if they can even find his grave, have almost no connection to him except an armband he was wearing when he died, and depending on how things go, his son who was in the womb at the time and grew up never hearing of him.

How coherent should this ghost be? How aware of the living?

Usually ghosts can react to the world of the living. Aside from Crow there are ghosts like Captain Weyandt, the ghosts in the Eye of the North and Drooburt as examples.

It’s only the ghosts that are affected by the foe fire that are stuck in the past like that, since binding their souls to defend Ascalon for eternity was appearently part of the spell. Well there is one exception among the foe fire ghosts: Bria but it’s not really clear why she isn’t affected like the others. Maybe she died just before the spell or it’s due to her being a powerful necromancer.

Edit: Whoops forgot about the ghosts in Spirit Vale. They also don’t seem to be aware of much, they only know that they are angry. They have nothing to do with the foe fire though, but maybe the way they died has something to do with their state of mind. I suspect the White Mantle, who might be behind their death, wiped their memory with magic. That’s just speculation on my part though.

Ok, thanks. That gives me some guidelines. Now I just have to decide how much info dump they can get from this ghost since I hadn’t expected him to be a clue source and they were meant to piece things together from more bits.

It should be stressed that there’s a difference between ghosts and spirits that have gone to whichever afterlife. Since you specifically cited Crow and summoning, I get the sense that you’re dealing with the latter.

The thing about ghosts is that they’ve got some reason for hanging around, and for the ones that don’t seem altogether sane, that’s the thing that’s warped their psyche. Every example we’ve seen of spirits that moved on in GW1 or 2, barring those subjected to a very particular torment, have been essentially ordinary people minus bodies. No crazier, or less knowledgeable, or less helpful than they were in life. Maybe confused, or struggling to cope with their new situation, but you shouldn’t treat him as a fundamentally different person just because he happens to live in the Underworld now.

Most ghosts we see in Guild Wars 1, and ghosts in Guild Wars 2 that don’t have some other influence on their comprehension (such as Foefire ghosts and those in Spirit Vale) seem to be fairly aware of the living and able to interact with them. However, they often have a lack of comprehension of time, believing that it has been much less time since they died than it really has, or even not realising that they’re dead at all.

However, that’s the ghosts that haven’t moved on. If your spirit is one that has moved on, then you’re going to have the complications we saw with Alastia Crow’s summoning, being creatures from the realm of the dead arriving before the desired spirit does. On the other hand, if the spirit has moved on, the site at which they’re summoned needs not have any connection to their life – the important thing is that it be a location where the barrier between the Mists and the physical world is weak.

In this case, in terms of comprehension… it probably depends on how their afterlife has been. If Grenth (or Raven, or whoever…) judged him kindly, he may be quite coherent, and will certainly be aware that he’s dead. If he was judged harshly, he might have spent twenty years in hell and be completely insane as a result. You’d have a better idea of his history, so you’d have a better idea of where he’s likely to fall on that spectrum.

Folks seem to be forgetting the ghosts of Brisban Wildlands – both around the grave in north central Brisban, and in Aurora Remains. These ghosts see people for who they are, but they either forget what/who they are, or are continuously reliving their last moments (such as the Krytan Villager ghosts in Aurora Remains). We saw the latter case in GW1 too, during Gwen’s Story in the Bonus Mission Pack.

Then there’s also the Seraph in the Fort Salma instance. These ghosts attacked all on sight, seeing the living as mordrem. Which has been very jarring and felt exclusively forced into the lore since the Foefire ghosts have been repeatedly stated to be completely unique in how they see other living beings as something they’re not – even the most insane ghosts outside of the Foefire still recognize if the living is living or what their species is.

The Spirit Vale spirits are a bit different from both of these though, as much as I understand, and instead resemble the ghosts freed from soul batteries in Abaddon’s Mouth mission in Prophecies – they attacked the players and aided the mursaat who killed them; in Spirit Vale, they do not attack the bandits, but others in their confusion.

Effectively, in the end, you have five types of outcomes for spirits that remain in Tyria (and probably those who move onto the afterlifes too):

• Those who are as coherent as in life.
• Those who are incoherent, but not hostile. Reason for incoherence may vary from believing themselves still alive, reliving their final moments repeatedly, or not remembering who they are.
• Those who see all as those who killed them – as lore conflicting as they seem to be…
• Those affected by the Foefire – seeing all as charr, and returning no matter what (cannot be sent on).
• Those who see others as enemies, and their enemies of life as allies – which thus far has been unique to soul batteries and Spirit Vale (which in turn might be tied to soul batteries/Bloodstone sacrifice, depending on the next two raid wings, the next one going further west towards Bloodstone Fen).

There is two ghosts in Queensdale as well, that actually interact with the player (outside of the swamp area).

One is very sane, rational, and friendly. She asked Grenth to stay and watch over her family’s farm, and he granted that wish.

The other is the ghost of the graveyard. I forget the details of her, but I do remember after a short walk she turns very violent. Both only appear at night however.

Then the ghosts in the swamp, they don’t talk, but do communicate crudely with adventurers with gestures.

There are sometimes ghosts around the memorial at Ascalon Settlement, too, that you can send off to fight centaurs in death as well as in life.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Folks seem to be forgetting the ghosts of Brisban Wildlands – both around the grave in north central Brisban, and in Aurora Remains. These ghosts see people for who they are, but they either forget what/who they are, or are continuously reliving their last moments (such as the Krytan Villager ghosts in Aurora Remains). We saw the latter case in GW1 too, during Gwen’s Story in the Bonus Mission Pack.

Those were some of the ones I was thinking of when I mentioned that ghosts typically interact with others fairly well, but are out of touch with their own history. We saw other examples in the Desolation in Nightfall.

There are also some ghosts in Brisban that are hostile. I’m not sure off the top of my head if the reason for that has been explained, though.

If you mean the ones I think you do, those are the ghosts of NPCs from GW1 (both named and not) who are said to be “lost and confused”. Some are hostile, others are not.

Oooh, thanks for the further replies! One of the players in this plot hasn’t been able to come in for a while so this is still pending, and the extra comments are very helpful.

I think the murdered man has not moved on; the co-plotter has referred to “unfinished business” and he was cut down not long after he fell deeply in love for the first time. So I like the idea that he doesn’t know time has passed, and he may have some loops in his conversation, but he can be a good clue source. Given the spotty attendance of players in the RP it’s best to cram in more info when they’re around anyway. Between loss of subtlety in the unfolding of the tale and loss of ever finishing at all, I’ll take the cruder info-hose approach.