Unfounded Allegation: Mursaat origins

Unfounded Allegation: Mursaat origins

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

Alright, so the title is intentional, just so everyone knows. With that out of the way, lets dive into what I have a theory about the origin of the mursaat.

Based ONLY on the evidence of their appearance, I have a theory that the mursaat are some sort of precursor to humans. The theory is that the mursaat were a first test run for the human gods ability to create life, forming them mostly in their image, but granting them vast magical powers and perhaps a connection to the mists themselves.

At some point the human gods abandon their creation (let’s say that the human gods, after creating the mursaat, were able to see how they would eventually be inclined towards evil deeds) and the mursaat are left to fend for themselves. Later, they either use their inborn connection to the mists to escape from the elder dragons, keeping their magic for themselves or, if they weren’t created with a natural connection to the mists, imitated the human gods ability to step into the mists with their enhanced aptitude for magic, failing to completely step into the mists and conveniently finding a safe zone away from both he horrors of the mists and the horrors of the elder dragons.

Eventually, the human gods return with their newest creation, the humans, and give priority to them while ignoring their previous creation. These new humans are now not as long lived as their older brethren, since for some reason the method that the human gods used to create life tends to lean towards evil if they are long lived enough (possible evidence for this could be Palawa Joko, i’d mention Vizier Khilbron but he had a minion of Abbadon whispering in his ear before he ever became a lich, so he doesn’t really count for the theory), which can also give a reason for why Dhuum was so against reincarnation and the undead, as they gave means for an individual to live beyond what would be considered normal and make them beyond the reach of the judgement of the gods. However the rest of the gods may view the humans as ‘perfected’ versions of their original creations, and as such could be lenient (which would be why they allowed Grenth to overthrow dhuum). Also, the human gods may have been wary of Abbadon giving magic to the humans, and when it backfired, fought against him to prevent the humans from turning down the path of evil like their previous creations, the mursaat.

Now none of this has any evidence whatsoever and I could even shoot a few holes in my own theory (such as, if one of the five ancient races were to be connected to the human gods, it would most likely be the forgotten, what with their connection to divine magic and, as seen in Guild Wars i think, their worship of the human gods), but it was really just a fun thought experiment that i decided to share and see if there’s stuff in lore that further provides evidence against (or, oddly, for) the theory at hand.

(Also, I know, just because something LOOKS human doesn’t make it human or mean it’s related to humans, for example, the norn, dwarves, elves, gnomes and probably a list long enough to rival human history)

(Also, as far as I know, nobody knows what the mursaat look like under their armour, so their unarmoured appearance could either make them look like humans or like predators from the movies of the same name)

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

Well your theory is 100% debunked by one piece of lore: the mursaat predate any time of the Six Gods’ time on or even known knowledge of Tyria. They were around for the previous dragonrise (supposedly 10,000 BE), while the Six Gods arrived much later, after the Elder Dragons went back to sleep (earliest known mention being 1769 BE)

Plus, while mursaat are humanoid, they have some distinguishing features marking them notably not human, their three toes being a big one, as well as their “wings”.

Other notes:

  • Dhuum was against resurrection and undead because he was an unfair god. It’s said that he had hunted down anyone who “escaped death” (exact meaning unknown, but could easily mean anyone who received healing magic for a fatal wound and survived just as well as meaning those resurrected/turned undead).
  • The gods did not worry about granting magic, but rather the conflict came when they wanted to take back magic – the five gods saw it as a mistake, while Abaddon did not see it as such (reason unknown). But Abaddon releasing magic was entirely agreed upon by the other gods (whether just by majority or unanimously is unknown though, we don’t know how the gods decided things).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

Well your theory is 100% debunked by one piece of lore: the mursaat predate any time of the Six Gods’ time on or even known knowledge of Tyria. They were around for the previous dragonrise (supposedly 10,000 BE), while the Six Gods arrived much later, after the Elder Dragons went back to sleep (earliest known mention being 1769 BE)

Plus, while mursaat are humanoid, they have some distinguishing features marking them notably not human, their three toes being a big one, as well as their “wings”.

Other notes:

  • Dhuum was against resurrection and undead because he was an unfair god. It’s said that he had hunted down anyone who “escaped death” (exact meaning unknown, but could easily mean anyone who received healing magic for a fatal wound and survived just as well as meaning those resurrected/turned undead).
  • The gods did not worry about granting magic, but rather the conflict came when they wanted to take back magic – the five gods saw it as a mistake, while Abaddon did not see it as such (reason unknown). But Abaddon releasing magic was entirely agreed upon by the other gods (whether just by majority or unanimously is unknown though, we don’t know how the gods decided things).

To be fair, the mursaat predate the human gods coming to tyria to our knowledge, it is, very technically speaking, possible for the human gods to have come to tyria before the earliest written records of history. Not that it’s likely anything the devs have planned (even i’d be shocked if anything i mentioned has any merit to it), but it’s still technically possible just because the lore hasn’t covered it.

Though, of course, the flaw of that argument is that anything could be changed according to the devs wishes, which i acknowledge. I also acknowledge that fan backlash would be pretty harsh if they changed the lore that drastically too.

Just to get that point out of the way.

For the Dhuum thing, that is a fair point, although i guess the question arises why the human gods would stand for such behaviour (seeing as they both accepted Grenth replacing Dhuum and fought against Abaddon when they tried to take away magic while he tried to let the mortals have it)

Didn’t know that the Gods were for giving mortals magic (whether, as you said, unanimously or by majority vote), so that’s another point to consider.

EDIT: I addressed the other points, I may as well address the biology thing too. Basically I agree with your assessment (as mentioned in the first post, just because something looks human-like, doesn’t mean that it has human origins), though a point of contention could be that the number of toes doesn’t really matter, I wouldn’t call the number of toes a big factor, but the seemingly elongated clawed nature of the toes a bigger factor. And the wings are a big difference too.

(edited by castlemanic.3198)

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Posted by: Moonyeti.3296

Moonyeti.3296

My problem with it is this (as you pointed out) – If you are basing it primarily because of similar appearances, then I would think you have to factor the Norn / Jotun in as well. Norn are just bigger humans and jotun are just slightly deformed big humans going by appearance. It actually bugs me a bit how similar humans and norn are, considering they aren’t really connected in any way. If they make a connection based on similar appearance then a lot of the current races would have to have had a common ancestor race.

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

My problem with it is this (as you pointed out) – If you are basing it primarily because of similar appearances, then I would think you have to factor the Norn / Jotun in as well. Norn are just bigger humans and jotun are just slightly deformed big humans going by appearance. It actually bugs me a bit how similar humans and norn are, considering they aren’t really connected in any way. If they make a connection based on similar appearance then a lot of the current races would have to have had a common ancestor race.

Or they could have a common creator.

Now, throughout the lore that I know, there’s no evidence of the creation of life by deities (even with the humans and the human gods, they kinda just appeared one day through the mists to my knowledge), which would be another general point of contention for my post (considering the theory states both the mursaat and humans were creations when there’s no evidence of such a thing happening to any race. Even elder dragon minions are merely ‘things being corrupted’ instead of brand new creations).

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

To be fair, the mursaat predate the human gods coming to tyria to our knowledge, it is, very technically speaking, possible for the human gods to have come to tyria before the earliest written records of history. Not that it’s likely anything the devs have planned (even i’d be shocked if anything i mentioned has any merit to it), but it’s still technically possible just because the lore hasn’t covered it.

Except that the “records”, which are already disproving false lore, are stating that it is when they first came to Tyria.

To say otherwise later on would be a retcon of a retcon… And I hope ArenaNet never gets that bad at consistency.

For the Dhuum thing, that is a fair point, although i guess the question arises why the human gods would stand for such behaviour (seeing as they both accepted Grenth replacing Dhuum and fought against Abaddon when they tried to take away magic while he tried to let the mortals have it)

We don’t really know that the other gods did. It’s also possible that they tolerated Dhuum for the same reason they kept Abaddon locked up instead of killing him outright – they needed a proper replacement and didn’t have one yet. It could also be that they knew they couldn’t defeat Dhuum (perhaps there is some truth behind his claims that he cannot be killed). Or it may be that while unjust, he never crossed the line that they as a majority saw, until near the end.

Anything is possible, given we know nothing about their views of Dhuum.

Didn’t know that the Gods were for giving mortals magic (whether, as you said, unanimously or by majority vote), so that’s another point to consider.

They were granting magic in small amounts for a while. The scripture of Grenth – and possibly Dwayna, Lyssa, and Balthazar – show this. It’s just that Abaddon granted the biggest and most widespread amount, which led to wars rather than solving them.

though a point of contention could be that the number of toes doesn’t really matter, I wouldn’t call the number of toes a big factor, but the seemingly elongated clawed nature of the toes a bigger factor. And the wings are a big difference too.

Unless I’m entirely mistaken (possible since I’m a layman in this realm), given how biology works, the difference in both size and number of toes is enough of a difference to denote them as having relatively large DNA sequence in certain parts that would denote it a different species but the same genus.

Add in the wings and size difference, and it’s definitely a different species.

My problem with it is this (as you pointed out) – If you are basing it primarily because of similar appearances, then I would think you have to factor the Norn / Jotun in as well. Norn are just bigger humans and jotun are just slightly deformed big humans going by appearance. It actually bugs me a bit how similar humans and norn are, considering they aren’t really connected in any way. If they make a connection based on similar appearance then a lot of the current races would have to have had a common ancestor race.

Don’t forget: giants, ogres, harpies, and largos.

The only ones that may hold shared ties to humans are harpies and largos – the former due to the old Etonian legend of harpy origins (fallen servants of Dwayna), and the latter due to the heavily shared theme with Orrians (both of Arabic / Middle Eastern thematic design – and add in that largos are fish-winged blue skinned humans, effectively, mirroring the winged blue-skinned goddess of humans…).

Now, throughout the lore that I know, there’s no evidence of the creation of life by deities (even with the humans and the human gods, they kinda just appeared one day through the mists to my knowledge), which would be another general point of contention for my post (considering the theory states both the mursaat and humans were creations when there’s no evidence of such a thing happening to any race. Even elder dragon minions are merely ‘things being corrupted’ instead of brand new creations).

Human history – as well as charr – do claim that the gods made Tyria, and though this has been disproven we know now that they did at least terraform it. This terraforming could have included the creation of species, which would have led credence to the belief the Six created Tyria.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: Amaimon.7823

Amaimon.7823

  • Dhuum was against resurrection and undead because he was an unfair god. It’s said that he had hunted down anyone who “escaped death” (exact meaning unknown, but could easily mean anyone who received healing magic for a fatal wound and survived just as well as meaning those resurrected/turned undead).

In a battle of semantics, just because we don’t want to die, was Dhuum an unfair god?
I’m not arguing that he’s not a kind god, but was he unfair? In fact, the whole point that made him say “death undeniable”, wouldn’t that make him the fairest god of all since he doesn’t discriminate or can be bribed/corrupted. I don’t think healing of a fatal wound counts, since the soul/spirit is still in the living body then. But after that, once your spirit leaves the body, then it was Dhuum’s wish that it would never, ever return.

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Posted by: draxynnic.3719

draxynnic.3719

One weakness in the argument that the gods never influenced Tyria prior to 1769BE is that I think there are indications that the Forgotten were associated with the gods all along. So while they hadn’t arrived themselves, it seems they had sent at least one race to Tyria beforehand… and may have sent others. So it’s not inconceivable that the mursaat could be some kind of ‘failed experiment’ that was sent to Tyria… or perhaps a race of magical super-soldiers was exactly what the gods wanted in order to fight against the dragons.

However, there’s not much to support the position either – as was acknowledged in the OP.

Regarding terraforming including the creation of species: transferring other species from other worlds could also appear to be ‘creation’ from the perspective of a native.

To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

@Konig

1. Yeah we don’t need retcons of a retcon, it’s dizzying enough going through the lore overhaul in WoW, no one needs that for GW2. (just as a note, I am a huge fan of WoW but even I can acknowledge it has flaws, i’m not hate bashing one of my favourite game franchises)

2. kinda makes me wish we knew more about the human gods. I hope they don’t disappoint if they ever reveal what’s up with them.

3. And suddenly i’m remembering those stories where the human gods picked their first disciples, that could be the start of the human gods giving mortals magic in small amounts, right? (although I guess Grenth having the aid of his seven reapers in overthrowing Dhuum could also constitute as such?)

4. considering chimpanzees and humans being different species, you’re probably right, but i can’t give a difinitive answer since you probably know more than i do.

5. for the point of the largos/orrian culture similarities, I actually believe that this was some form of oversight on the developers instead of there being lore-based similarities (since it’s extremely difficult to assume that the largos and orrians could have culturally influenced each other, considering the largos penchant for secrecy.) but yeah basically agreed with your point.

6. And now I’m confused. I know about the crystal sea becoming the crystal desert but they did other terraforming? do we have any details? cause this makes more questions than it does give answers, like did they perform a mass evacuation of the planet in order to restructure it and then put all the races back after giving priority to humans? how can we trust any history we find if terraforming happened (atleast any history before the human gods came to tyria) if they changed it? and if the human gods terraformed the planet, how did they not know about the elder dragons? or did they know and didn’t care, thinking they wouldn’t be a problem? also is that why we basically dont know about anything pre human gods arrival (apart from the very vague there were 5 elder races and six elder dragons, the forgotten purification ritual of glint, the mursaat betrayal and the seers creation of the bloodstone) because terraforming happened? I’m confused by this fact.

@amaimon

actually healing someone who was going to die without magical intervention could still fall into the domain of those who “escaped death” i feel.

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Posted by: Amaimon.7823

Amaimon.7823

@amaimon

actually healing someone who was going to die without magical intervention could still fall into the domain of those who “escaped death” i feel.

yea, I don’t really disagree, but as I said, it’s a battle of semantics. Where do you draw the line between surviving, and escaping death. and sometimes it’s not necessarily magic, like some wounds can be healed quite easily without magic, given you have the proper tools to do so. Is that also “escaping death”, or just luck of being in the right place at the right time.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

In a battle of semantics, just because we don’t want to die, was Dhuum an unfair god?

Dialogue, to me, about Dhuum’s unjustness about the living seems to be “if you came close to death, but lived in 100% legit methods, he’ll still hunt you down and kill you just as he would if you died and got resurrected”.

For example, as I’m understanding it: let’s say you cut an artery, normally if left alone you’ll quickly die, but you manage to get to a doctor, get it closed off, and have a blood transfusion so that you are fit as a fiddle…. then Dhuum comes in and stabs you through the gut with the scythe.

Not exactly just actions there. Nor is that exactly fair either.

There’s also implications that he tortured even innocent souls, punishing souls that didn’t deserve that punishment, though this is more interpretation from the feel of dialogue more than the words themselves.

One weakness in the argument that the gods never influenced Tyria prior to 1769BE is that I think there are indications that the Forgotten were associated with the gods all along. So while they hadn’t arrived themselves, it seems they had sent at least one race to Tyria beforehand… and may have sent others.

On the other hand, there’s no strong indication that the Forgotten were on Tyria prior to 1769 BE (as that is the year attributed to their arrival on Tyria (presumably world) in GW1, and while the Forgotten are attributed with being around during the last dragonrise, they’re also still attributed to having been brought to the world by the Six Gods just as in GW1).

The overall implication being that either the last dragonrise lasted for nearly 9,000 years and the Six Gods arrived on the world near the end of it (either with the Forgotten, before the Elder Dragons went to sleep, or after the Forgotten, after the Elder Dragons went to sleep), or the claim of the previous dragonrise being at 10,000 BE is false and that was a dragonrise before the previous dragonrise (and apply the same addendum here).

yea, I don’t really disagree, but as I said, it’s a battle of semantics. Where do you draw the line between surviving, and escaping death. and sometimes it’s not necessarily magic, like some wounds can be healed quite easily without magic, given you have the proper tools to do so. Is that also “escaping death”, or just luck of being in the right place at the right time.

I think the point of Dhuum’s "unjust"ness in this regard is that he held the line too far on one side than the other.

But Grenth seems to have moved the line to the complete opposite side of the spectrum, allowing all resurrection and undead – until, that is, rather recently with the loss of resurrection magic in the past 250 years.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

@castlemanic.3198:
3. And suddenly i’m remembering those stories where the human gods picked their first disciples, that could be the start of the human gods giving mortals magic in small amounts, right? (although I guess Grenth having the aid of his seven reapers in overthrowing Dhuum could also constitute as such?)[/quote]That’s actually what I was referencing with Grenth, Lyssa, Balthazar, and Dwayna – Grenth outright says to be granting magic over undeath in his conversation with Desmina, and Balthazar is certainly blessing those soldiers with something – whether it was just a short enchantment or their own ability to use magic at will being unclear – Lyssa implies to have granted magic and Dwayna could be interpreted as “protect and heal through mundane means” just as much as “protect and heal with this magic I give you”.

5. I’d just note that we haven’t met many largos, and those we have met are all hunters – we’ve not met any political ambassadors (they have some form of government, so it’s hard to believe that they’re all hunters like norn, who lack a government in large part due to them all/mostly being solitary hunters), so it wouldn’t be unlikely for the largos and Orrians to have met in the past and communicated, even if they’re not communicating with us now (or ever with Krytans/Ascalonians – which could be explained by the existence of the Guild Wars and the distance from the sea).

6. It comes from Orrian History Scrolls Balthazar arrived on the world sweeping the land in fire, and Melandru arrived growing new nature across Orr.

- I wouldn’t count the Crystal Sea -> Crystal Desert as terraforming as, while it certainly is transforming the earth, it was a cataclysmic event not an intentional method to improve the environment.

- There is no indication that they evacuated races (or that they terraformed the entire world at once or in hostile methods). One interpretation of the events is that they were removing dragon corruption and replacing it with new, uncorrupted, wildlife.

- And we know with 100% certainty that the Six Gods did know about the Elder Dragons. There’s the “Scroll of the Five Gods” mentioned, repeatedly, in Season 2 which is actually the biggest source of information the Durmand Priory has on the Elder Dragons (alongside jotun stelae and dwarven tomes). Whether they thought of the Elder Dragons as a problem or not, however, is unanswered.

- We don’t have much knowledge of pre-human arrival because jotun were secretive with their records, dwarven records got rewritten time and time again, Forgotten are gone and so are their records, same with Seers, and mursaat are even more secretive than the jotun. Basically: every race that survived, didn’t leave many surviving records and those that didn’t survive left less than that.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

@Konig

right so i had a long response written out and the forums just screwed me over, losing the post. Ah well, it’s not life or death.

Just briefly, since I’m not going to be bothered to rewrite everything I wrote.

Agreed about the largos thing, especially because it’s possible for a culture shift considering the time difference and the dragons rising.

never considered terraforming could be benign or could happen sequentially (say going from west to east), giving other races time to prepare for that without causing large disturbances. Also the link says they only terraformed Orr. considering that, it seems everything else now falls in line. One point though (I wil admit this is nitpicking), I could be remembering this wrong, but didn’t the Jotun have a strong oral tradition, forgoing the use of written material? Or am I superimposing norn lore onto the jotun?

Agreed about the other stuff too.

Isn’t the whole “Glint was purified by the forgotten before, in turn, protecting the races that weren’t the mursaat” thing a counter to your point about there being no strong evidence about the forgotten being in tyria before the human gods? There’s also that one dude in the priory who mentions there being 5 races (the exact quote being something along the lines of “five against six, that seems unfair”), though a) we don’t know if the names of the races are mentioned, and if they are, b) according to that one convo between the ‘last’ forgotten and the newly made exalted (or was it just before they became exalted) about how the name of their race was forgotten long ago, possibly meaning that modern tyrians have no knowledge of what the forgotten were previously called.

I don’t really want to think of the possibility of a 6th elder race that’s actually the 5th everyone is talking about, but somehow they left less behind than the mursaat, and everyone misinterprets this 5th race as the forgotten. It’s “tin foil hat conspiracies that don’t improve the storytelling and is only set up to surprise with no thoughts about cohesiveness” levels that nobody wants and is way below Anet’s quality of storytelling.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

For jotun, they hold an oral tradition ever since their fall, but before then they carved giant monuments across the Shiverpeaks, some holding actual runes for translating apparently.

The only race said to ever solely use oral tradition instead of writing is the krait. Everyone else has a mix.

We don’t know when Glint was purified and subsequently betrayed Kralkatorrik, but dialogue in Edge of Destiny implies that she turned when Kralkatorrik was already hibernating, implying the “hiding of the races” was involving the other Elder Dragons, and that they did not all go to sleep at once (or Glint’s phrasing is a minor red herring). The “dude in the priory” you refer to is Scholar Trueblood who does specify that it’s the five surviving races we knew of (Forgotten, Seers, mursaat, jotun, and dwarves). Modern Tyrians no longer know the Forgotten’s race’s true name, hence their current moniker, but the name was lost after the Exodus, when the Forgotten retreated in full to the Crystal Desert.

The “five against six” is five races against six Elder Dragons, even Trueblood specifies this. The fifth is definitely the Forgotten (even mursaat records mentions their alliance with the Forgotten and this is, indirectly, explained by Taimi as why mursaat armor looks so similar to the enchanted armor (especially in GW1)).

There is no “6th elder race” – in so far as the alliance was concerned at least. We now know thanks to Bitterfrost dialogue that the kodan were survivors from the last dragonrise, and we know karka and djinn were around then though they’re hardly a civilized and united species, and there’s implication that charr and tengu also survived (though charr were primitive at the time so their survival – if they are survivors – would likely be thanks to location to the east, or luck; and tengu lore implies they simply kept fleeing the Elder Dragons).

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

Alrighty, I feel a lot more caught up on lore now.

Can I just take a moment to thank everyone for their input so far?

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Posted by: Bazompora.2635

Bazompora.2635

Unless I’m entirely mistaken (possible since I’m a layman in this realm), given how biology works, the difference in both size and number of toes is enough of a difference to denote them as having relatively large DNA sequence in certain parts that would denote it a different species but the same genus.

Add in the wings and size difference, and it’s definitely a different species.

You may be mistaken.
Entirely.

Additionally, we don’t have much in way of indication that those feather-like appendages are true wings: they are too small and frail to be functional, seemingly just sway around in ondulations and their placement is akin an ornament part of mursaat garments.

Elonians who know her history are often proud to have one of their own in the pantheon.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

Well, I use the term “wings” because I recall such terms used in-game. I doubt that they can be used as birds or bats or insects can use theirs. But they do seem to be actually part of the physiology of the mursaat rather than just an ornament.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

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Posted by: Amaimon.7823

Amaimon.7823

Well, I use the term “wings” because I recall such terms used in-game. I doubt that they can be used as birds or bats or insects can use theirs. But they do seem to be actually part of the physiology of the mursaat rather than just an ornament.

are they though, they do seem fully functional on us as backpacks. I mean, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t see how it’s right either. We just need to see a mursaat taking off his backpack and then see if the black feathers are still around or not. without that, I don’t think it’s fair to say either way. The feathers could be attached to the back, attached to the ornamental backpiece, or it could be a manifestion of magic or aura, something else altogether

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

are they though, they do seem fully functional on us as backpacks. I mean, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t see how it’s right either. We just need to see a mursaat taking off his backpack and then see if the black feathers are still around or not. without that, I don’t think it’s fair to say either way. The feathers could be attached to the back, attached to the ornamental backpiece, or it could be a manifestion of magic or aura, something else altogether

I don’t think backpacks really have that much lore tied to them. I mean we can have a series of feathered wings on our backs. Not even the tengu have wings that can help them glide, but suddenly races like the sylvari, a plant people mind you, have lore-wise workable feathered wings? I don’t believe that equippable mursaat wings backpack are anything more than an accessory for players to have the full mursaat outfit look.

Also, during our time on the fire islands chain in episode 2, we actually equip mursaat armour and the wings don’t show up. Our backpacks are also hidden during this time, which means that they could have easily put mursaat wings but saw that this would be kind of lore breaking (or, alternatively, reveal something HUGE about the mursaat that had no evidence before that moment, which thankfully they thought about not including if that were the case).

So, yeah, I’m with Konig on this one. The mursaat wings are part of their biology.

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

are they though, they do seem fully functional on us as backpacks.

To be fair, that’s because of how they did the model for GW2. They seemed to just take an upscaled human male and made the outfit and backpiece so that they can sell it in the gemstore later.

The fact we never see mursaat without the ‘wings’, and how they were animated in gw1, and even the analogous mentions of mursaat as “angels” all indicate that they’re part of the mursaat’s body.

The only real evidence for them not to be would be their lack of use (not a strong argument), and the Mursaat Overseer lacking the wings. But that could easily be seen as them having fallen off after 250 years of neglect (it is just stone, magical or not, and doesn’t even seem capable of animating beyond able to shift its placement), or alternatively if one follows the belief that mursaat are very narcissistic (there is some but not entirely solid evidence for such), they could see the mere stone structure as unworthy of showing their full appearance.

Or it could be an overlook. But when we’re able to find armor of mursaat and wear it, but no ‘wings’ comes with, seems like the wings are not part of the armor.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

Unfounded Allegation: Mursaat origins

in Lore

Posted by: Bazompora.2635

Bazompora.2635

I already thought of them as “wingpacks” back in the days of the Mursaat Rallies, as that is when I examined Mursaat armor much more closely, for the whole dress like a Mursaat theme going back then.

And surely, if you look at Mursaat from Guild Wars “1”, the “wings” looked like held together by a back item already;

See

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Elonians who know her history are often proud to have one of their own in the pantheon.

Unfounded Allegation: Mursaat origins

in Lore

Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

To me looks more like a lump of armor protecting where they meet the back (the wings go underneath that piece of armor).

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

Unfounded Allegation: Mursaat origins

in Lore

Posted by: Amaimon.7823

Amaimon.7823

To me looks more like a lump of armor protecting where they meet the back (the wings go underneath that piece of armor).

ye, as I said, it’s all possible, it’s just not possible to say with certainty either way is true until we see a living mursaat without the backpiece.