Afterlife and why people are upset about death (heavy PoF and Season 4, Episode 4 spoilers)

So, in PoF the Commander dies, temporarily loses memory and personality (which seems to be an event unique to the traumatized souls from the Domain of the Lost), but eventually regains them and continues to function past bodily death. An ally NPC whose name I forget also restores her former self and eventually ends up helping in Kormir's library.In S4E4, we meet Snaff and Eir and communicate with Glint, who oversees some portion of the Mists and protects those who venture there. Both Snaff and Eir appear to have their personalities, agency, and cognitive abilities completely preserved; from PoF, we know that they aren't just Mist echoes without self-awareness (or at least they don't have to be, as true afterlife existence is proven to be possible).Thus, the question: why be mad at Logan for indirectly causing Glint's and Snaff's deaths, if they both still exist and can be interacted with? Why is Taimi afraid to die, if she knows she'll just end up hanging out with her perfect mentor and discussing science? Why did Blish decide to transfer his mind into a golem, which apparently made true final death (i.e. nonexistence) possible for him (in the form of taking his higher functions offline), if he could just let his body expire and continue his existence in the Mists? Why do the people of Tyria mourn their dead if they'll just meet them again in the afterlife; death should be an extremely frustrating inconvenience at most, but definitely not something to despair over?The only possible explanation I'm seeing is that very few ghosts actually get to have a decent afterlife, but that should still produce considerably more hope and less fear.

I guess this is fear of the unknown coupled with a strong survival instinct. Plus, you don't know where exactly the people you love end up in the mists. Humans have been told by their gods, norn shamans may have been able to sneak a peak into the Mists, but asura, despite being generally knowledgeable on magic, don't know all that much about the Mists. As for Blish: He may still be in his body, similarly to how a coma patient is still alive, but unable to act. (Except he has no sensory input, so even more horrible.) In his case golem immortality might be worse than death.Charr don't seem too upset, even though there was no mention of a charr afterlife yet. I guess there is one, but we also see many charr partaking in the mist war. Interestingly, Flame Legion seems very knowledgeable about death and the afterlife, being the only faction that attempted and almost succeeded at resurrecting someone since 250 years ago. Maybe we'll meet Gaheron again, to ask him about this?The race with the most reason to be upset are probably sylvari. Thanks to The Departing we know that sylvari have ghosts, like everyone else, but since the race is only around 30 years old, they might not know that.

survival instinct, fear of the unknown and probably because it's goodbye forever to alot of her friends

First off, it's natural to be scared of dying. Even in a world where you can go and visit the Underworld through a portal, that doesn't mean you want to move there permanently before it's your time. Part of it is a basic biological drive to want to stay alive and be active in this world, not the next.

Second, it's not so much fear of what will happen in the next life, but being trapped in the Mists or some subsection of that where you've been sorted. Sure, there may be some sort of reward in the next world, but it's different from being in this one. And as Eir said, those spirits can only be here for so long. Spirits are not supposed to come back, and when they do, it's usually because something has gone wrong. They belong in the next world.

The biggest reason is probably that in GW2, death is an unreliable fate.

If you do world completion, you will encounter many ghosts would could not move on because their deaths were too traumatic. For example, one of them is a girl who became a Risen and had her body stolen by Zhaitan, and needed it to be destroyed before she could move on. The PC was lucky to end up in the Domain of the Lost, from what we have seen this is one of the better endings, and that many ghosts end up stuck in Tyria forever, with poor or nonexistent knowledge of who they are, and in some cases like the Ascalonian ghosts, stuck in time.

And then lets say you do succeed in dying, moving onto the Mists and that your death isn't too traumatic. Even then, where you end up varies from person to person because of how they lived their life, who they served ,etc. For example, many Humans end up in domains that are specific to each of the Human gods, a reward to them given as a blessing for their servitude to that god in life.

The thing to understand about the Mists, is its not a single place, but a vast proto-reality that spans the scope of the entire universe/multiverse, there is no guarantee that you would end up even remotely close to anyone that you know, it could take you hundreds of thousands of years or more to find your loved ones in the Mists if some higher power hasn't guaranteed that you would end up with them. The only reason we see cases of this with people like Eir and Snaff is because of powerful beings like Glint who helped them.

Its also not yet fully understood whether Mists echos (like Dessa) are actual souls, or just protomatter. It could be that this is the fate of some people who die, to be forever caught in a time loop of which they are unaware, similar to Ascalonians.

There is one more issue: Ghost eaters exist, both inside and outside of the Mists, and in various forms. There was a ghost eater in Ascalon Catacombs, and Palawa Joko also has his own versions of the ghost eaters, and then there was the Eater of Souls. These beings consume ghosts perrmanently, to where they don't even have an soul anymore. This means that even the afterlife can be a battle for existence.

On top of all of this, there are also fates worse than death. During a Priory mission, Seiran mentions that you could be lost forever in shadow, and this is hinted at many times and we have seen the Domain of the Lost (after Grenth left) and Kormir's/Abbadon's Library both invaded by underworld creatures, meaning that there are also parts of the Mists--shadowrealms--which basically serve as "Hell". We have mostly seen the underworld from Mad King Thorn's, Grenth's and Dhuum's influence, but they are not native to it and it is implied to be much worse without them, and that living beings can become forever lost in these realms without even the release of death.

If you had the chance of living a life in Tyria, would you risk being lost for all eternity--or worse--in death or otherwise? I think the only reason it went so well for us is because of our own power and accomplishments.. By this point we had helped almost everyone in Tyria, killed two Elder Dragons,, and been infused with unbound magic and directly exposured to ley energy. Throughout the entire story, it is established that the PC is one of the most powerful, knowledgeable, and renowned beings in existence, and even then we barely made it through.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I hope it helps.

@"Hashar.6082" said:Thus, the question: why be mad at Logan for indirectly causing Glint's and Snaff's deaths, if they both still exist and can be interacted with? Why is Taimi afraid to die, if she knows she'll just end up hanging out with her perfect mentor and discussing science? Why did Blish decide to transfer his mind into a golem, which apparently made true final death (i.e. nonexistence) possible for him (in the form of taking his higher functions offline), if he could just let his body expire and continue his existence in the Mists? Why do the people of Tyria mourn their dead if they'll just meet them again in the afterlife; death should be an extremely frustrating inconvenience at most, but definitely not something to despair over?Let's be honest, a lot of the anger at Logan was Rytlock deflecting his own guilt at failing to protect Snaff. Yes, that was Logan's responsibility in the original plan, but when Destiny's Edge still decided to follow-through with an adjusted plan without him, Rytlock and Co. failed and so Logan (the deserter) and Eir (the strategist) received the lion's share of the blame. It's highly questionable whether their plan would have worked even with Logan there. So I think part of the anger also represents denial about their failures when faced with the true power of an Elder Dragon. Moreover, Rytlock seemed less upset that Snaff died and more upset at what he saw as Logan's desertion and that they failed to stop Kraalkatorik. If Snaff had died but Kraalkatorik had been defeated, then a lot of the resentment against Logan would likely not exist.

In regards to the "Mistlife," the Mists are nebulous, containing fractals across time and space, and various domains and realms. The souls of the dead are still vulnerable to other dangerous entities who dwell in the Mists. Souls can forget their memories. They can disappear and fade entirely. So while one can potentially interact with souls of the dead, they are not guaranteed to have permanence in the Mists. And even if they exist, it may be difficult to reach the particular spirit. And while the commander's spirit had some semblance of its former self, some spirits are almost akin to mirages, illusions, or false echoes of the former person.

Norn mourn their dead because their fundamental capability to cultivate their Legend ends in death. And for asura, their contributions to science basically ends. There is a certain element of tragedy, for example, with the meta-narrative of Dessa and the Mistlock Observatory. There is no new science being done there. They are fractal echoes essentially stuck in an infinite loop.

Full sentience in death could be rare, and more likely Eir and Snaff might have specifically been “preserved” by Glint. For all we know they’re entirely unique. Most other spirits we’ve seen are restless, insane, cursed, have a divine connection, or have unfinished business. People who die in peace might fade into Nirvana, more or less. I don’t know a lot about the lore surrounding afterlife in universe though.

Honestly, asking this is like asking "Why is it bad to kill people if they go to heaven?"

Like, yeah, it's not bad after they die. But that doesn't mean dying is a nice experience.

@"JTHMRulez.9378" said:Honestly, asking this is like asking "Why is it bad to kill people if they go to heaven?"

Like, yeah, it's not bad after they die. But that doesn't mean dying is a nice experience.

If you kill everyone there will be no breeding thus no newcomers in the Afterlife which means nothing new will come about and the place will eventually stagnate... How is that a good thing!?!

I could ease his passage, if nothing else, send him to the Mists, where...well, who knew if it was any better there than here. Probably wasn't.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Marjory%27s_Story:_The_Last_Straw

So most people, even necromancers who deal with the dead a lot, don't know much of what goes on in the Mists. We players do because we're playing special characters.

And ghosts that have moved on to the afterlife usually don't return from the Mists unlike Eir and Snaff; even their return was time limited. On top of that, it's very rare for ancient ghosts to be met on trips to the Mists or seen in Tyria - excluding the rather odd case of the Primeval Kings, there isn't a single case of souls older than 500 years old - those cases being Thorn and his son, and Turai and his people in Elon Riverlands (which, tbh, is a retcon to GW1 lore as it is). And the Thorns are a rather special situation. Besides them, the oldest souls seen in both games are only 200-250 years old, both in the Mists and in Tyria. And one case, Gwen, is a barely substantial, mute instance.

Eir and Snaff are both only dead for a few years.

There's nothing to really show how long souls last, either in Tyria or the Mists, or what they need to stay "around".

But before Path of Fire, it was always treated as a "souls don't last forever, they'll eventually fade away, somehow".

So most souls will meet an unenviable fate after death, and the more cheerful examples from PoF and S4 are just rare exceptions. I see. Thank you for the answers.

@"JTHMRulez.9378" said:Honestly, asking this is like asking "Why is it bad to kill people if they go to heaven?"

Like, yeah, it's not bad after they die. But that doesn't mean dying is a nice experience.

Well, if everyone could somehow be certain that dead people will go to heaven (as opposed to hell, or purgatory, or endless void), killing someone would have the same emotional and moral implications as a forced permanent deportation to New Zealand which may or may not have been painful; which is to say, significantly lighter emotional and moral implications compared to an actual murder. Then again, I never understood the fear of dying as a physical sensation, while I understand the fear of death itself pretty strongly.

maybe, the afterlife, if you end up in a non-horrible place, is very very dull?

Imagine being stuck there for all eternity with basically nothing to do. No food to enjoy, no quality time with your partner of choice, no nice smells, no labs and no new inventions for asural, no plants to talk to and sun to sit in as sylvari, no heroic deeds and no hunting for norn. No bewerages, no music. Nothing.

Just plain boredom. Forever. Think of boring Sunday afternoons for all eternity.

I would be scared shitless to die.

It makes absolutely no sense. But game couldn't really build any suspense if death is quite openly trivialized.

I think the topic is more or less finished, so I will just sum it up in a bigger post for future copy/paste purposes:

Death is cheap in Tyria and it always has been. There are many reasons for it, ranging from ghosts still walking on Tyria, over the underworld, to the fractals. While the Fractals appear to be a special case, the other two are deeply braided in lore since GW1 days. To the average Tyrian however, death still holds its horrors, mostly because of the fear of the unknown, but also for the reason that most individuals cannot leave the mists and come back to resume whatever they did before dying (barring certain NPCs who do just that, still offering trading goods, leading their own armies, etc). But there is not much reason for it, as we can see more or less everywhere: Ghosts are omnipresent in the game. There was after all a good reason for Joko to create ghost eaters and some species that devour ghosts seem to have developed on their own (Ascalonian Catacombs boss, scarabs…), meaning that spirits still lingering around is rather normal in Tyria, which might be the reason we see so many of them even on core maps. So, why exactly do Tyrians fear death?

1) Not everyone has come into contact with those spirits. That makes however for a bad excuse, as by now it should be basic knowledge, especially with the church of Grenth around.

2) On a fundamental scale, there might be some survival instinct for most species, leading them to fear death as a reflex. While this seems to be a good explanation, such instincts only make sense when you have the concept of evolution backing them up. We don’t really know how humans developed, seeing as they seem to be a pet project for the gods, but at least for Norn, Charr and Asura this could work. Well, if evolution worked on Tyria the same way it does on earth at least, which I heavily doubt after the Dev explanation of the origin of Jade Sea wildlife and the skimmer…

3) With cheap death comes cheap suspense. A storyteller must have their ability to create tension. Death being the consequence of failure being used to create such tension is one of the oldest tools used by writers. So, what did the writers do? They ignored this part of Tyria’s reality and focused on something that mirrored our world to avoid/ignore the problem. I am not saying that it is a bad decision to do so, as it works just fine for most people, but yeah, like with most things going on around GW2, you shouldn’t think to hard about it, because it makes not much sense when you start to question it.

One of the most glaring examples of sacrificing logic for an easier storytelling would be the complete removal of resurrection and healing magic in GW2. Let’s ignore resurrection and just focus on healing magic for a second. While certain wounds and illnesses in GW1 did indeed need special treatment that could not be replaced with magic (as seen with mental health, for example in “Unnatural Creatures”), a good monk was the backbone of every doctor’s office. Anet decided that they did not want a pure healing profession in GW2 for gameplay reasons, so they let monks disappear. This makes zero sense. It would mean that over just a few years the knowledge of dozens of enchantments, healing and protection spells was lost. This would never happen in a real world. Medical professions are far too integrated into society to lose such big amounts of fundamental and basic knowledge forever! Resurrection is by far the biggest offender. Bringing someone back from the dead is by far the most important art of healing in combat, and only in a peaceful world these arts may become more uncommon, but even there people would still learn resurrection spells to rescue someone who had a nasty accident - and Tyria was far from being a peaceful place in the last centuries. Under no circumstances should these arts just have died out to the extreme they did in GW2.

I also have a problem with this theory here (taken from the Shining Blade Oath thread):

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:One theory is that the Six's departure, specifically Grenth's, is what prevents resurrection magic from working as it once did.

First of all, Grenth seems like a bad choice here. We know after all that resurrection was a thing before he even existed, since Dhuum strictly forbade it and hunted down those who disobeyed him (“The Nightman Cometh”), making Dwayna a far better choice when trying to bind the ability to a deity. To suggest that the gods somehow enabled resurrection magic to work leaves quite a big room for questions though: Why did they allow it to work for other species they had no real interest in in GW1? While the healing spells are mostly called healing prayers, they are still considered spells/magic by the game, not some miracle. With magic growing stronger on Tyria over the years, shouldn’t they also get easier to perform? Even if they were prayers/miracles, these only explains monks. Ritualists use the power of their ancestors to perform their magic, so why did their resurrection spells stopped working? We know that the gods could have left some power in Tyria to still make it work (Nenah:” The magic of the gods remains strong, even in their absence.”), so why didn’t they? Claiming that the departing of the gods made it impossible to cast resurrection magic may look like a cheap way out of the writer’s problems, but it does not really make much sense. But since we have already discussed the way the writers deal with these problems above, who knows?

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

excluding the rather odd case of the Primeval Kings, there isn't a single case of souls older than 500 years old - those cases being Thorn and his son, and Turai and his people in Elon Riverlands (which, tbh, is a retcon to GW1 lore as it is). And the Thorns are a rather special situation. Besides them, the oldest souls seen in both games are only 200-250 years old, both in the Mists and in Tyria. And one case, Gwen, is a barely substantial, mute instance.

In the case of GW2, I'd be inclined to chalk that up to how blind the setting seems to be to anything that happened much before GW1. But in the first game... if we take the Dynastic Spirits at their word, they're all over 600 years dead. If Nadijeh truly was the first of the Primeval Dynasty, that'd put Sogolon at around 1200 years dead. If Margonite culture can safely be assumed to have gone extinct with Abaddon's fall, Khimaar ismore than 1000 years dead, and there's no telling how many of the generic ghosts in the region were also Margonites. For the comparative scarcity of ghosts in that game, and the proportion of them that can't be dated, there's quite a fair few that can be verified as being truly old.

@Hashar.6082 said:So most souls will meet an unenviable fate after death, and the more cheerful examples from PoF and S4 are just rare exceptions.

Not so much that, as 'we don't know if the examples we've met are representative.' It may be that most souls meet terrible fates... or that most souls wind up in paradises that the PC will never view because there's nothing for players to kill there, or that the inevitable fate of the dead is to be reincarnated into the fruit of a particular species of desert cactus. For all we find ourselves entangled with certain aspects of it, we know very little about what dying and the afterlife entails in the Guild Wars universe.

@"Nikolai.3648" said:Ghosts are omnipresent in the game. There was after all a good reason for Joko to create ghost eaters and some species that devour ghosts seem to have developed on their own (Ascalonian Catacombs boss, scarabs…), meaning that spirits still lingering around is rather normal in Tyria, which might be the reason we see so many of them even on core maps.

There are many ghosts, but that still can only represent a small, small minority of those who die.

Consider the Foefire ghosts. At launch, they represented the bulk of the ghosts in-game. They are the spirits of those Ascalonians who died in a single events- or, according to some interpretations, those Ascalonians who died across twenty years of war.

That still leaves the Ascalonians who died in the 200 years since.

And those from the 1200 years leading up to that war.

And all of the charr from those 1400+ years.

And all the grawl, ogres, harpies, and assorted other races who've died on that land.

And all the races who've died in all the other lands.

A lot is being made of ghosts in this thread, but if even one death in a thousand resulted in a ghost, there wouldn't be a spot in Tyria where you couldn't find a few.

Let’s ignore resurrection and just focus on healing magic for a second. While certain wounds and illnesses in GW1 did indeed need special treatment that could not be replaced with magic (as seen with mental health, for example in “Unnatural Creatures”), a good monk was the backbone of every doctor’s office. Anet decided that they did not want a pure healing profession in GW2 for gameplay reasons, so they let monks disappear. This makes zero sense. It would mean that over just a few years the knowledge of dozens of enchantments, healing and protection spells was lost. This would never happen in a real world. Medical professions are far too integrated into society to lose such big amounts of fundamental and basic knowledge forever! Resurrection is by far the biggest offender. Bringing someone back from the dead is by far the most important art of healing in combat, and only in a peaceful world these arts may become more uncommon, but even there people would still learn resurrection spells to rescue someone who had a nasty accident - and Tyria was far from being a peaceful place in the last centuries. Under no circumstances should these arts just have died out to the extreme they did in GW2.

I think your issues with resurrection are valid, but the monk's healing abilities have survived. The guardian grew out of the same tradition, and inherited the same body of knowledge. Many of their healing abilities are the monk's healing abilities, at least comparable to the extent that other professions have inherited abilities from their previous incarnations. Largely unlike those others, we've even seen the monk's abilities picked up by new users- one of the warrior's heals was originally a monk spell, and the Herald's heal draws on Glint's monk side. I haven't gone through to check, but I suspect that there are more GW1 monk skills still hanging around than GW1 mesmer skills.

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

excluding the rather odd case of the Primeval Kings, there isn't a single case of souls older than 500 years old - those cases being Thorn and his son, and Turai and his people in Elon Riverlands (which, tbh, is a retcon to GW1 lore as it is). And the Thorns are a rather special situation. Besides them, the oldest souls seen in both games are only 200-250 years old, both in the Mists and in Tyria. And one case, Gwen, is a barely substantial, mute instance.

In the case of GW2, I'd be inclined to chalk that up to how blind the setting seems to be to anything that happened much before GW1. But in the first game... if we take the Dynastic Spirits at their word, they're all over 600 years dead. If Nadijeh truly was the first of the Primeval Dynasty, that'd put Sogolon at around 1200 years dead. If Margonite culture can safely be assumed to have gone extinct with Abaddon's fall, Khimaar ismore than 1000 years dead, and there's no telling how many of the generic ghosts in the region were also Margonites. For the comparative scarcity of ghosts in that game, and the proportion of them that can't be dated, there's quite a fair few that can be verified as being truly old.

It's very hard to tell which Dynasty those Dyanstic Spirits come from. Primeval Dynasty? Great Dynasty? Shattered Dynasty? Whatever dynasty came after?

But in GW1, we also had, for one Wintersday, the Primeval Kings show up. None that show up in GW2, though. And it's unclear whether they showed up because of the portal or because that's just where they've been since death. And, of course, there's King Jahnus.

And we know that Nadijeh is not the first of the Primeval Dynasty. She herself talks about "the first king" in the story instance:

Some say the gods crowned the first Primeval king, set above the others who first set foot upon this land. However, the truth of this has long been forgotten, erased by the sands of time.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hallowed_Ground_(story)#Dialogue

She wouldn't really be uncertain if she was crowned by the gods or not. This dialogue implies that it wasn't even her grandfather who was the first king (in fact, dialogue about how Elona was in a time of strife during her and Wasi's reigns, and she ended it, suggests that Wasi is her predecessor, immediate or not). Even Wasi doesn't seem to be first, though, since as he says: "I came into power in a time of war. Our armies were scattered, but I stood firm. Rallied the people. They came to know me as a defender of the desert."

That said, I would have considered Sogolon and the other two "Sunspear Guard ghosts" (forgot their name off the top of my head) as part of the Primeval ghosts as we see in the Tomb.

I did forget about Khimaar though.

@"Hannelore.8153" said:The biggest reason is probably that in GW2, death is an unreliable fate.

If you do world completion, you will encounter many ghosts would could not move on because their deaths were too traumatic. For example, one of them is a girl who became a Risen and had her body stolen by Zhaitan, and needed it to be destroyed before she could move on. The PC was lucky to end up in the Domain of the Lost, from what we have seen this is one of the better endings, and that many ghosts end up stuck in Tyria forever, with poor or nonexistent knowledge of who they are, and in some cases like the Ascalonian ghosts, stuck in time.

And then lets say you do succeed in dying, moving onto the Mists and that your death isn't too traumatic. Even then, where you end up varies from person to person because of how they lived their life, who they served ,etc. For example, many Humans end up in domains that are specific to each of the Human gods, a reward to them given as a blessing for their servitude to that god in life.

The thing to understand about the Mists, is its not a single place, but a vast proto-reality that spans the scope of the entire universe/multiverse, there is no guarantee that you would end up even remotely close to anyone that you know, it could take you hundreds of thousands of years or more to find your loved ones in the Mists if some higher power hasn't guaranteed that you would end up with them. The only reason we see cases of this with people like Eir and Snaff is because of powerful beings like Glint who helped them.

Its also not yet fully understood whether Mists echos (like Dessa) are actual souls, or just protomatter. It could be that this is the fate of some people who die, to be forever caught in a time loop of which they are unaware, similar to Ascalonians.

There is one more issue: Ghost eaters exist, both inside and outside of the Mists, and in various forms. There was a ghost eater in Ascalon Catacombs, and Palawa Joko also has his own versions of the ghost eaters, and then there was the Eater of Souls. These beings consume ghosts perrmanently, to where they don't even have an soul anymore. This means that even the afterlife can be a battle for existence.

On top of all of this, there are also fates worse than death. During a Priory mission, Seiran mentions that you could be lost forever in shadow, and this is hinted at many times and we have seen the Domain of the Lost (after Grenth left) and Kormir's/Abbadon's Library both invaded by underworld creatures, meaning that there are also parts of the Mists--shadowrealms--which basically serve as "Hell". We have mostly seen the underworld from Mad King Thorn's, Grenth's and Dhuum's influence, but they are not native to it and it is implied to be much worse without them, and that living beings can become forever lost in these realms without even the release of death.

If you had the chance of living a life in Tyria, would you risk being lost for all eternity--or worse--in death or otherwise? I think the only reason it went so well for us is because of our own power and accomplishments.. By this point we had helped almost everyone in Tyria, killed two Elder Dragons,, and been infused with unbound magic and directly exposured to ley energy. Throughout the entire story, it is established that the PC is one of the most powerful, knowledgeable, and renowned beings in existence, and even then we barely made it through.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I hope it helps.

This is a beautiful piece of writing.

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

It's very hard to tell which Dynasty those Dyanstic Spirits come from. Primeval Dynasty? Great Dynasty? Shattered Dynasty? Whatever dynasty came after?Hm... you're right. Looking back at their dialogue, they refer to 'Dynasties' not 'Dynasty'. That probably puts them at post-Primeval.

And we know that Nadijeh is not the first of the Primeval Dynasty. She herself talks about "the first king" in the story instance:

Some say the gods crowned the first Primeval king, set above the others who first set foot upon this land. However, the truth of this has long been forgotten, erased by the sands of time.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hallowed_Ground_(story)#DialogueCurious. I was taking her mention of uniting the tribes and, in the open world, her claim that "I was the one who united Elona. I am the reason it became a great nation. It exists because of me," to mean that she'd founded the Dynasty, but you're right, she never makes the claim, and looking at the GW1 timeline has reminded me that the Primevals didn't start burying their monarchs in the Tomb until more than two centuries into their rule.

I'm not sold on Wasi being Nadijeh's predecessor, though. All he says is that he ruled during a time of war and defended his lands. With a dynasty that lasted for more than six hundred years, surely there was more than one period of significant warfare.

@Hashar.6082 said:

Thus, the question: why be mad at Logan for indirectly causing Glint's and Snaff's deaths, if they both still exist and can be interacted with? Why is Taimi afraid to die, if she knows she'll just end up hanging out with her perfect mentor and discussing science? Why did Blish decide to transfer his mind into a golem, which apparently made true final death (i.e. nonexistence) possible for him (in the form of taking his higher functions offline), if he could just let his body expire and continue his existence in the Mists? Why do the people of Tyria mourn their dead if they'll just meet them again in the afterlife; death should be an extremely frustrating inconvenience at most, but definitely not something to despair over?The only possible explanation I'm seeing is that very few ghosts actually get to have a decent afterlife, but that should still produce considerably more hope and less fear.

I think the answer can be this:

@Castigator.3470 said:I guess this is fear of the unknown coupled with a strong survival instinct. Plus, you don't know where exactly the people you love end up in the mists.

But, even if this can be a valid explanation, in my opinion the reason for this situation is the unclear status of the Gods. Any God, claiming he/she is the master of a certain domain should explain to his/hers followers at least the basics. Knowing the fate of a soul after dead may eliminate the fear of the unknown, leaving only the bitter taste of some unfinished business/lost friends in case of dead. I don't think the survival instinct plays a role in the regrets / fears caused by dead. Breathing keeps you alive but you are not immortal by breathing. This is the case with the survival instinct: it can keep you alive in some situations but you cannot avoid dead by having it.

But, apparently, the Gods did not explain to the mortals what is after dead. They become more and more like a caricature than a god. What I said, god? These ..... beings are less responsible for the livings than a mortal ruler.

The lack of decision of the lore team regarding the gods status propagates through the entire story, creating more and more controversial aspects. As long as the Realm of the Dead has a god, the humans (at least the humans) should know the fate of a deceased person and no fear (or regrets) should appear as long they trust the God. It seems is not the case here.

@Rognik.2579 said:First off, it's natural to be scared of dying.

The dead is the only thing we know it will happen, no matter what. Being afraid of this will hurt the mental sanity of a person.The only fear I can consider regarding this case is related of the way you die or related of the moment of dead.

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@"Nikolai.3648" said:Ghosts are omnipresent in the game. There was after all a good reason for Joko to create ghost eaters and some species that devour ghosts seem to have developed on their own (Ascalonian Catacombs boss, scarabs…), meaning that spirits still lingering around is rather normal in Tyria, which might be the reason we see so many of them even on core maps.

That is indeed a good point. But shouldn’t most people then come to the conclusion that there must be at least something after death, instead of the endless void? Doesn’t this knowledge already destroy some of the fear of the unknown, the main reason we fear death?

Let’s ignore resurrection and just focus on healing magic for a second. While certain wounds and illnesses in GW1 did indeed need special treatment that could not be replaced with magic (as seen with mental health, for example in “Unnatural Creatures”), a good monk was the backbone of every doctor’s office. Anet decided that they did not want a pure healing profession in GW2 for gameplay reasons, so they let monks disappear. This makes zero sense. It would mean that over just a few years the knowledge of dozens of enchantments, healing and protection spells was lost. This would never happen in a real world. Medical professions are far too integrated into society to lose such big amounts of fundamental and basic knowledge forever! Resurrection is by far the biggest offender. Bringing someone back from the dead is by far the most important art of healing in combat, and only in a peaceful world these arts may become more uncommon, but even there people would still learn resurrection spells to rescue someone who had a nasty accident - and Tyria was far from being a peaceful place in the last centuries. Under no circumstances should these arts just have died out to the extreme they did in GW2.

I believe you misunderstood me there. I know the lore of how the Guardians are supposed to have included the monk’s abilities in their hybrid profession. I just think that they have done a terrible job at it. If you compare the impact of the monk’s wide rage of healing and protection spells from GW1 to what Guardians are able to in GW2, you will have to agree that the capabilities of the Guardians are laughable compared to a monks from 250 Years ago. Just take a look at enchantments: They were all wiped out! What we are left with are some boons. How can protection and regeneration even be compared with something like Protective Spirit, Reverse of Fortune, Spell Shield or Mark of Protection? That not only goes for monks but other professions too. Arcane Echo got merged with Echo and reduced to something that can’t even copy most spells, just a few utilities? And that is an enchantment that survived more or less intact. Look at all those that were simply lost. You mentioned the Mesmer: The fact that Livia uses fragility (a Mesmer hex, nice to see so many GW1 survivors picked up Mesmer as their secondary profession, though I am happy they included that mechanic for those few cases in GW2 at all, it is a nice touch) means that this simple, but effective hex, simply got forgotten in these few years? ALL of the hexes did? Just a few condition applications are left from all the former glory of Mesmers and Necromancers? How?! That is such an immense loss of knowledge.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:But in GW1, we also had, for one Wintersday, the Primeval Kings show up. None that show up in GW2, though. And it's unclear whether they showed up because of the portal or because that's just where they've been since death. And, of course, there's King Jahnus.

I think I remember that. If I recall correctly, not all of them were present though. The drops of The Darkness hint at a few more kings and queens, for example Queen Illyana, who is mentioned nowhere else. I was actually surprised they went with King Wasi in the story Mission in GW2, I thought for a second that they renamed King Wenslauss, especially since it was such a defensive spirit, fitting for a GW1 Monk. Since they were all buried here (the drops were likely stolen from the graves), I think simply not all of the Royalty makes an appearance. More interestingly, and please correct me if I am wrong, expect Janus, who wasn’t in the graves in neither of the games, none of those spirits appear in both games. So if a spirit appears in GW2 times, they were not present in GW1 and vice Vera. I don’t think there is a real reason behind it though, but maybe the spirits from GW1 times went in to the hall of heroes and had other things to do in the mists with the latest trouble, leaving only those few behind that we can still meet.

@Cristalyan.5728 said:But, apparently, the Gods did not explain to the mortals what is after dead. They become more and more like a caricature than a god. What I said, god? These ..... beings are less responsible for the livings than a mortal ruler.

I am pretty sure the scriptures of the gods must contain some stories about the afterlife. We as a player simply don’t know about them, but seeing as the believes in the six is so fleshed out, its hard to believe that there would be no mention of the afterlife somewhere, especially since 1) we know these places exist, 2) the gods are real and seem to have an interest to keep their believers around. The lack of believe in those scriptures was caused by the absence of the gods and the distrust in their teachings, that followed, which is a reasonably reaction for someone who can not be sure they even existed in the first place and are not a bunch of made up lies by the church.

Just take a look at enchantments: They were all wiped out! What we are left with are some boons. How can protection and regeneration even be compared with something like Protective Spirit, Reverse of Fortune, Spell Shield or Mark of Protection? That not only goes for monks but other professions too. Arcane Echo got merged with Echo and reduced to something that can’t even copy most spells, just a few utilities? And that is an enchantment that survived more or less intact.

I intend to go on in here with my little theory that lowered ambient magical levels (caused by elder dragons activity so far) is at fault in here - so basically we can't pull out all these stunts anymore, because there is not enought ambient arcane juice in out proximity to power them up.

with livia cheating the system same way she mantained her young body ;)

but feel free to not take it as canon that's just my theory that fits the hole decently (based on dialogue lines from asuran ps)

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Just take a look at enchantments: They were all wiped out! What we are left with are some boons. How can protection and regeneration even be compared with something like Protective Spirit, Reverse of Fortune, Spell Shield or Mark of Protection? That not only goes for monks but other professions too. Arcane Echo got merged with Echo and reduced to something that can’t even copy most spells, just a few utilities? And that is an enchantment that survived more or less intact.

Thank you for your explanation attempt, but I am afraid this might go against established lore. The elder dragons feed on magic, meaning that they awaken when the level of ambient magic is high. Thus, before they woke up, the magic level was high. After that, it might have gone down a little…. up until we killed 2 of them and released so much ambient magic that it coagulates into daily mystic coins by now. I am afraid the level of ambient magic never was lower than in GW1 times, which means that explanations based on such are rather problematic.

@"Nikolai.3648" said:I think I remember that. If I recall correctly, not all of them were present though. The drops of The Darkness hint at a few more kings and queens, for example Queen Illyana, who is mentioned nowhere else. I was actually surprised they went with King Wasi in the story Mission in GW2, I thought for a second that they renamed King Wenslauss, especially since it was such a defensive spirit, fitting for a GW1 Monk. Since they were all buried here (the drops were likely stolen from the graves), I think simply not all of the Royalty makes an appearance. More interestingly, and please correct me if I am wrong, expect Janus, who wasn’t in the graves in neither of the games, none of those spirits appear in both games. So if a spirit appears in GW2 times, they were not present in GW1 and vice Vera. I don’t think there is a real reason behind it though, but maybe the spirits from GW1 times went in to the hall of heroes and had other things to do in the mists with the latest trouble, leaving only those few behind that we can still meet.

Not all of The Darknesses' drops were related to the Primeval Kings, it should be noted. For example, it had Lord Victus' weapons, and he was an Orrian hero from 200 years prior to GW1. He was there via the portal to the Hall of Heroes though, per [the short story](https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Rift_(story%29).

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@"Nikolai.3648" said:I think I remember that. If I recall correctly, not all of them were present though. The drops of The Darkness hint at a few more kings and queens, for example Queen Illyana, who is mentioned nowhere else. I was actually surprised they went with King Wasi in the story Mission in GW2, I thought for a second that they renamed King Wenslauss, especially since it was such a defensive spirit, fitting for a GW1 Monk. Since they were all buried here (the drops were likely stolen from the graves), I think simply not all of the Royalty makes an appearance. More interestingly, and please correct me if I am wrong, expect Janus, who wasn’t in the graves in neither of the games, none of those spirits appear in both games. So if a spirit appears in GW2 times, they were not present in GW1 and vice Vera. I don’t think there is a real reason behind it though, but maybe the spirits from GW1 times went in to the hall of heroes and had other things to do in the mists with the latest trouble, leaving only those few behind that we can still meet.

While I was aware that not all of the weapons did have the same background (the Ogre-Slaying Knife being the most obvious example) I indeed should have mentioned that. I did however forget about the short story, only remembering Lord Victo by name, so it was a nice reread. Thank you for it. You might want to fix the link though. I do however think that most of the weapons are from the royal family (8 from 15 at least), though I have to admit that I find it a bit strange that Illyana, who I specifically picked out, is indeed never mentioned again, leaving them (I assumed by the name they were female, but we really don’t know) another unknown mystery to me that probably won’t be mentioned ever again.

I'm seeing a lot being made of 'fear of the unknown' throughout this thread, but, at least in my experience, and the experiences of those close to me, that isn't the main reason to fear death. It's loss, and that is very much still a factor in what we know of the afterlife in GW2. Even if you can be assured that your soul will live on, you lose your home. You lose the pursuits you've dedicated your existence up to that point to. You lose the people you surrounded yourself with, your loved ones, your colleagues, your social contacts. You lose your pets, you lose your keepsakes, you lose your sense of place in the world. You lose physical sensation. You lose everything except awareness, knowledge, and memory, and in most of the cases, you lose it forever. (The humans, at least, maintain a number of separate afterlives, so even reuniting after death isn't a sure thing.) From there, you can fall headlong into the debate on whether identity is circumstantial, but regardless, that is potential for a devastating amount of loss and grief and existential angst.

I would argue that could justify some terror.

@Nikolai.3648 said:

I believe you misunderstood me there. I know the lore of how the Guardians are supposed to have included the monk’s abilities in their hybrid profession. I just think that they have done a terrible job at it. If you compare the impact of the monk’s wide rage of healing and protection spells from GW1 to what Guardians are able to in GW2, you will have to agree that the capabilities of the Guardians are laughable compared to a monks from 250 Years ago. Just take a look at enchantments: They were all wiped out! What we are left with are some boons. How can protection and regeneration even be compared with something like Protective Spirit, Reverse of Fortune, Spell Shield or Mark of Protection? That not only goes for monks but other professions too. Arcane Echo got merged with Echo and reduced to something that can’t even copy most spells, just a few utilities? And that is an enchantment that survived more or less intact. Look at all those that were simply lost. You mentioned the Mesmer: The fact that Livia uses fragility (a Mesmer hex, nice to see so many GW1 survivors picked up Mesmer as their secondary profession, though I am happy they included that mechanic for those few cases in GW2 at all, it is a nice touch) means that this simple, but effective hex, simply got forgotten in these few years? ALL of the hexes did? Just a few condition applications are left from all the former glory of Mesmers and Necromancers? How?! That is such an immense loss of knowledge.

Ah, I see. That's a fair point, and it's one that's bothered me as well, but to raise the most convincing counter-argument I've seen: was the knowledge lost, or outmoded? Sanctuary combines the effects of all four of the protection spells you listed, extends the benefit to everyone nearby instead of a single target, prevents the enemy from approaching, and creates a field that can be further exploited, all with one spell. Mesmer's changed focus, which is why I pick on it so much; the hexes are gone, often without replacement, but in exchange they got portals, invisibility, chronomancer nonsense, and more. Necromancers have lost a little in the virility of their curses, but the staying power provided by the new ways they utilize life force make them a much greater threat in this game than I ever found them to be in the first. Even if Grenth's Balance is preserved in a tome somewhere, it'd be a hard sell when one could be learning the Scourge skillset instead.

(Naturally, none of this applies to resurrection, which is why people hold onto the 'gods did it' argument so tightly despite the only basis being a couple of off-the-cuff comments in pre-release interviews; it's the only reasoning that comes close to making sense of the loss of such a vital and ubiquitous skill.)