Guild Wars 2

Hokay! So you guys helped me out earlier, now i’m calling another life-line. Earlier this week I started a guild named The Forlorn Vigil on Tarnished Coast, we’re a Heavy RP guild focused around the war in the Mists. What I want to know is how exactly WvW and the “War in the Mists” apply to the lore.

As it’s said, the Mists is basically a timeless and endless universe-thingy that intrudes on other dimensions, causing the Mist War I guess. How exactly would I go about having my guild seek dominance of this land they war over? Moreso, how would I explain the other invaders and the like.

There isn’t too much lore around it, but there are a couple theories. Lets wait for Lord Konig to post the Dhuum-Menzies one.

Jeff Grubb: The Mists are the building blocks of reality, the proto-reality that exists between the worlds. It is where we find afterlifes and the homes of the various gods and other powerful entities. The Mists also resonate from the worlds around them, such that they form bits of their own reality – islands of existence that reflect the histories of their worlds. http://www.guildmag.com/gmblitz-lore-interview-with-jeff-grubb

Your guild could be wanting to gain controle of one of the stable pockets of “mist reality”.

The World v World maps have been said to be a battleground set up by Balthazar, the human god of war. Originally, it was also thought that he is the one who provided the Lion’s Arch portals connecting to it, but I believe that got reconnected into saying the Asura figured it out themselves.

Anyway, lore-wise your world’s representatives are fighting in the mists against enemies from parallel dimensions who you believe to be evil invaders, but really they’re just more people like yourself who are doing the same thing.

I cannot for the life of me remember where I heard this from, so if anybody wants to assist with sources I’d appreciate it.

This is my own pet theory, but I think Balth set the place up so people from every world can gain combat experience fighting in the Mists because dying in his battlegrounds doesn’t kill you for good. This lets everybody get better at fighting so they’re in tip-top shape when it comes time to battle the dragons.

I wasn’t intending to post in this thread due to the backsided insult from Beetle, but DaMunky, I’ve never seen it mentioned that the WvW maps were a battleground set up by Balthazar.

All I’ve seen for lore on WvW is that there are “evil invaders” who are “without mercy or remorse” that the Mist War is fighting against, defending the world of Tyria from invasion via the Mists. Whether or not the enemies truly are evil is unknown since it’s only said by NPCs who are infallible. Which goes against the notion of “Balthazar made the battleground,” so until I see where it’s said Balthazar made the battleground, I’m going to presume that’s one of many misconceptions created from misunderstandings of statements or presumptions made by one person and taken for fact by others.

The closest there is would be The Movement of the World saying Balthazar opened portals to the Mists in Lion’s Arch (which seems to have been retconned out) after the city flooded.

The parallel dimensions bit is only player theory. Everything about the enemies is completely unknown, except that they’re claimed to be evil. All we know is that "there’s an aggressive force in the Mists who is believed to be trying to invade.

Also, there are NPCs (the Mist Warriors in LA during idle chat) who say that people who go into the Mists often do not return, speculating that they’re dying in the war – for good, that is. So I don’t think that “dying in [the] battlegrounds doesn’t kill you for good.”

The only thing that seems to point towards the area being build by Balthazar is the fact that there is sooooooo many Balthazar images etched into the structures. But this doesn’t mean that he made the area at all. For all we know the structures were created by the first people to enter the world of the mist war. Playing other player worlds only comes from mechanics that I know of, literally playing other servers. Other than one asuran story there is no lore holding the idea of alternate universes existing. If such a thing exists, in my opinion it is centered around a real world (the Tyria that we know) and some “shadows” of what it could be on other sides. One of those shadows being the reality where the asura story I mentioned happens.

Right, forgot about those statues in the fortification walls.

I have been taking that as the forts being built by the Zaishen, since originally it was said that the Priests of Balthazar maintain the portals to the Mists. But like I said the whole portal bit seems to have been removed (I shouldn’t have said retconned before since it was not part of the released game) since The Movement’s original writing. Just a little leftover from now-removed lore, basically.

Wasn’t an insult, though reading it again I notice why you would think that. I just noticed you say that whenever someone brings up Dhuum or Menzies or the Mist Wars.

No idea why I said Lord Konig…. XD

I’d agree that this is likely the case as well. It would make sense for a group like the Zaishen or another to take charge of the mist war. And in their early years they would still have been rather devoted to Balthazar, even if they have slowly started creeping away from that towards a more all-inclusive perspective.

I sometimes like to think that, although there’s absolutely no indication of such, that the Mist Warriors are a sub-division of the Zaishen, dedicated to the Mist War. It just feels all too weird that the Zaishen have no active part despite being around Fort Marriner from the beginning, and in the past they were all about stopping threats coming from the Mists, and managing the arena combat – especially when it came to arena combat in the Mists (like GW2’s sPvP).

It’s just all too weird that the Zaishen hold nothing in GW2 except 20-some NPCs that hold no unique dialogue (or models, I think) or names.

I wouldn’t say that was the Zaishen’s main goal (stopping threats from the mists). I mean before nightfall nothing suggested that they were anything more than pretty much a large guild devoted to the art of warfare and training for war. This made them extremely good allies in the war against Varesh and Abaddon, but until that point in time they didn’t really hold that title. Sadly, I’m thinking that there is less and less chance that we’ll get any sort of explanation on the subject.

I never said anything about main goal. I said that they were “all about” – as in, when such occurred, they were among the first to respond. Tomb of the Primeval Kings? Ziashen. Nightfall? Zaishen.

My opinion based on the story is that the Sunspears had recruited the Zaishen, not that they had appeared on their own…

For which? With Tombs, we didn’t even know of the Sunspear’s involvement until Nightfall, and as far as we know, it was just a single unit.

With Nightfall, the Zaishen came to Elona investigating dark disturbances, then Kormir went abroad to recruit soldiers from Tyria and Cantha to face Nightfall. Bad Tide Rising is when the Zaishen show up, and Kormir subsequently leaves.

“The Zaishen have protected this world for eons. We are the mortal servants of the war god, Balthazar. We are his blades, wielding his power upon this world. <Character name>, I do not know if you have heard what dark events have transpired at the Tombs of the Primeval Kings. The heart of this darkness lies somewhere here within Elona. We came as soon as we could, and it seems we are just in time.”

And that first line implies that the Zaishen have been doing this for a while.

Point taken, I guess I just never got that vibe off of them when I played.

Just bumping this thread since I recently found some interesting ingame dialogue about it.

I do not think that what was written about the Mist portal in the Movement of the World has been removed from lore.
Sherriff Siriam in Fort Marriner states that the portal was first discovered after Lion’s Arch had been resettled, and that it took the Asuran colleges years to even figure out what it was, where it led and how to find a way to use it in order to get to the Mists.

Since the portal wasn’t there in the original GW1 Lion’s Arch, it can only be there due to Balthazar opening it, as the Asura are apparently only responsible for controlling it.
However, as the gods themselves remain silent, it is clear that mortals had to find their own way how to actually make use of it.

In my opinion, this intervention of Balthazar opening the portal can be compared with the Reaper of Grenth that is summoned in Orr – proof of the gods actually still existing and indirectly intervening when things get really messy as far as their personal domains are concerned, eventhough they do not actively commune with humanity any longer.

The Mist Warriors also make mention of a blue hued portal that fluctuates and leads to the Mist Wars. So it seems that they did retcon it out, but forgot to fix those NPCs’ dialogues.

I don’t really see that as a contradiction, actually. We only know the portal was created by Balthazar – its functionality has never been explained by that.

In my opinion this doesn’t mean that it has been retconned out. It’s propably just a another bunch of loose ends that haven’t been perfectly fitted to each other. There’s room left for interpretation, of course. A bit too much, perhaps, but I don’t see a plain contradiction.

My theory is that Balth was only responsible for opening the raw connection to the Mists in that spot, but left the population of LA with the task of how to control/form it on their own, which is supported by what Siriam says.