Guild Wars 2

As the human god of flame, he would be much less suspected when he came to help us fight the dragons. As a Mursaat he surely would raise far much more suspicion and he didn’t side with the White Mantle. I don’t get it.

I don’t think his actual motive is known. But, I personally think there is something to do with the reason of his weakening power. It could be that he wants to hide from those who have “abated” him, or he is simply introverted?

But yeah, I think his arch story is still continuing in the game afaik. I just hope I’ll live long enough for the reveal XD

I think his reason for the Mursaat disguise was to get access to the Bloodstone. The White Mantle aren’t super into the regular 6 human gods (they repeatedly harassed and attacked a temple to them in GW1) and likely would not have let Balthazar just walk up to it. And the bloodstone was literally his first magical snack on his agenda.

Why he stayed in the disguise is another matter altogether. There have been a lot of speculations, such as, maybe he’s hiding from someone/thing, or Marjory was shadowing him, not giving him a way to discreetly ditch the facade, and even that being a Mursaat gave him more, non-human-specific, opportunities for employment but I don’t think there’s anything really solid to explain that.

I don’t think we know yet but I suspect it could be all of the above.

Something has happened that made Balthazar lose a lot of his power. Whatever it is might also mean that he didn’t want anyone knowing he was on Tyria. (Maybe he’s had a falling out with the other gods? Maybe they’re actually the children of some race of greater beings and Tyria is their toy box, Balthazar could be in a time-out and should be sitting on the naughty step right now).

Since he was going after the Bloodstone, which was controlled by the White Mantle who were trying to resurrect Lazarus, and were just about to fail, Lazarus was a pretty solid choice for a disguise – it got him access to the bloodstone, and instant supply of followers and no one knew his real identity.

It only caused a problem when he tried to recruit us to his fight against the dragons. He may well have not known or forgotten that we would not trust the mursaat. Or he may have thought we’d gladly accept any help, regardless of the source. Given he’s been worshiped as a god for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years he may have forgotten that it ever took more than appearing in front of people and telling them what you want to get them to agree.

But until then, and even after that when he gave up on us and went back to doing his own thing, the disguise didn’t cause a problem for him, whereas revealing his identity or suddenly changing into something else could have lost him the followers he already had. So he probably felt it was better to stick with it.

Even after getting access to the Bloodstone, the disguise helped him win some cannon fodder in the White Mantle; if Lyssa was his ally, and indeed is Jennah or is backing Jennah, then she may have insisted on it to protect her own interests by dividing her enemies.

Beyond that, there’s the question of his divine image. Learning that their god was rendered powerless would jeopardize human faith. Learning the things their god was willing to do to regain power might be even worse. Acting as “Lazarus” solves both problems.