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Shining blade oath and the PC's "death".


Eekasqueak.7850

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Nothing about the oath says "until death". The oath kills the oathtaker, so nothing suggests it'd go away after death. Keep in mind that while resurrection has been reduced to practically non-existent in modern GW2 time, when Livia was a normal person, and when she designed the oath, it was a relatively common magic.

And the oath doesn't swear anyone to Kryta, or to its crown which is what the Shining Blade care about. The oath only prevents talking about classified Shining Blade intel to people not in the Shining Blade.

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@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:Nothing about the oath says "until death". The oath kills the oathtaker, so nothing suggests it'd go away after death. Keep in mind that while resurrection has been reduced to practically non-existent in modern GW2 time, when Livia was a normal person, and when she designed the oath, it was a relatively common magic.

And the oath doesn't swear anyone to Kryta, or to its crown which is what the Shining Blade care about. The oath only prevents talking about classified Shining Blade intel to people not in the Shining Blade

If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

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@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:Nothing about the oath says "until death". The oath kills the oathtaker, so nothing suggests it'd go away after death. Keep in mind that while resurrection has been reduced to practically non-existent in modern GW2 time, when Livia was a normal person, and when she designed the oath, it was a relatively common magic.

And the oath doesn't swear anyone to Kryta, or to its crown which is what the Shining Blade care about. The oath only prevents talking about classified Shining Blade intel to people not in the Shining Blade

If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

Perhaps, but would you bet your life on it?

I think the overall resolution, though, will simply be that the Shining Blade still regards anything that would come under the oath as being on a need-to-know basis, so the only thing that the Commander knows and which the oath applies to is the plan to resurrect Lazarus in order to kill him. (Remember that Livia was worried about the Commander telling the world that she's still around, which implies that the Commander can do so and the oath won't prevent it.)

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@Eekasqueak.7850 said:If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

It would seem rather pointless if it went away at death, since back when it was designed, it just meant the White Mantle had to get a monk with a resurrection spell. Then bam, they could torture all those juicy secrets out of the agent.

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@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:Nothing about the oath says "until death". The oath kills the oathtaker, so nothing suggests it'd go away after death. Keep in mind that while resurrection has been reduced to practically non-existent in modern GW2 time, when Livia was a normal person, and when she designed the oath, it was a relatively common magic.

And the oath doesn't swear anyone to Kryta, or to its crown which is what the Shining Blade care about. The oath only prevents talking about classified Shining Blade intel to people not in the Shining Blade.

personnaly, I've always considered the resurection magic in gw1 to be nothing more than a gameplay mechanic and not a lore thing by any means.

And it makes sense. If bringing people back from the dead was a common things, how the hell could such a magic had been lost? Why don't we never hear about it? And why didn't we use it in the story of both gw1 and gw2 to bring back important characters you die.

There is no ressurection magic in Tyria. The case of ressurection in the lore are extremely rare (PC and team in Factions, luxons during the great ceremony, Shiro, PC in GW2,...) and are considered exceptionnal.

As for the shining blade oath...well it really depends on how the enchantment worked. Maybe it go away when you die, since you're not supposed to come back. Or maybe it's tied to the soul and stay in place forever.Considering that the oath is basically a device invented by the developpers so that they can conveniently avoid to speak about the shining blade and Livia, i wuld say it's very likely we are still cursed.

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@"Lametoile.7394" said:personnaly, I've always considered the resurection magic in gw1 to be nothing more than a gameplay mechanic and not a lore thing by any means.

Except it fully is. Some examples:

Glint: "Their souls will be reaped upon one of the five Bloodstones, just as the Chosen you witnessed being slaughtered in the Maguuma Jungle."Glint: "If this happens, no magic on this world or any other will bring them back."https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Dragon's_Lair#Intermediate_cinematic

"Remember all those times we were dying and I was the only one left standing but I used my signet on Alesia instead of you only to have her die while attempting to restore Lina's life? Yeah, good times. Good times."https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Reyna

"[...] Dhuum's reign will be brutal and uncompromising, for he is the Final Death, and he does not tolerate resurrections or the undead. [...]"https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Nightman_Cometh

These are just obvious examples that can't be argued to be breaking the 4th wall breaking like this tutorial quest; despite no dialogue breaking the 4th wall, some people have argued in the past it does "because it's tutorial and other tutorial stuff does blatantly".

@"Lametoile.7394" said:And it makes sense. If bringing people back from the dead was a common things, how the hell could such a magic had been lost? Why don't we never hear about it? And why didn't we use it in the story of both gw1 and gw2 to bring back important characters you die.

There is no ressurection magic in Tyria. The case of ressurection in the lore are extremely rare (PC and team in Factions, luxons during the great ceremony, Shiro, PC in GW2,...) and are considered exceptionnal.

It might not have been explicitly common. But it existed, and wasn't isolated to super rare cases, since Reyna comments about how we use it in adventures. We don't know how it got lost, just that it was - but a lot of magic changed in 250 years. Hexes are a lost magical art, too; the entire point of Livia having unique hex-based skills rather than simple condition apply skills was to show that she uses ancient magic (there was a dev comment somewhere about that).

One theory is that the Six's departure, specifically Grenth's, is what prevents resurrection magic from working as it once did.

But ultimately, resurrection stuff was removed from the lore as "no longer accessible" because the devs felt like it cheapened story deaths - which was a constant discussion back in GW1's community why we couldn't just use resurrection skills on Rurik, Saidra, Togo, or Gadd (among others). There are obviously limits to who can be resurrected, given these story deaths yet story resurrections outside of special circumstances (Envoys, etc.), but they're never specified.

What is specified is that resurrection magic existed, but doesn't anymore.

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I even remember some short stories from pre-launch of GW1 describing battle from historical guild wars where monks gets killed and the narratign warrior says out loud that "well, crap if we die now, we die for good"

as for rezzing important characters, my headcannon for this would be that resurrection magic A) would require body to be "mostly" intact B) original soul needs to be accessible C) needs to be able to overpower whatever was the source of that character dying in the first place.which would explain why people sacrificed on the bloodstone can't be revived (soul not available because it is trapped in bloodstone), not sure if I remember how exacly rurik or saidra died, but for Gadd - he died in explosion - it is very likely there was nothing really left to resurrect in there and for Togo - mere mortals can't overpower envoy's instakill-spell (which also contributes to PC death during factions campaign where Shiro just randomly kills whole party at a time, and it takes rest of envoys to revive us - but only under promise we deal with shiro afterwards)

as for why it's gone, from what I understand the entity responsible for allowing it to work this way in the first place was grenth, so it would be logical that with grenth distancing himself away some of his gifts would weaken.....

other possible issue in here is arcane energy (magic) needed to be channeled to perform the thing - please note that asuran PS arcdirectly states that because of EDs activity "ambient magical levels are dropping at alarming rate" - if they were dropping like this for better chunk of last 250 years you could assume these levels used to be MUCH higher during GW1 timeline giving humans more than enought of magic juice to channel into incredible things, which now may be not as accessible simply due to not enought of magic juice floating around to do it..... (or in case of more recent events - not enought SUITABLE arcane juice floating in the air ;) )

but it's all speculation as good as any other....

point to original point stays tho - when oath was designed resurrection magic was not uncommon thing, therefore it going away with one's death would make barely any sense in terms of prevention of SB intel leaking.

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It worked for Jon Snow.

As far as resurrection magic counterargument goes, the penalty for revealing information about the order is death. If members who violated the oath could easily be resurrected, it defeats that penalty.

And to be honest, it’ll be entirely up to Anet to decide in the end but I have a feeling that that is the route they’d go with. The main character being a member of that order isn’t really a major plot and it’s the easiest way to tie up that plot thread.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:As far as resurrection magic counterargument goes, the penalty for revealing information about the order is death. If members who violated the oath could easily be resurrected, it defeats that penalty.

From discussion with the exemplars afterwards, however, it seems to be regarded almost as much as a precaution than a penalty per se. Sure, it is a punishment to anyone who tries to spill freely, but it also means that information cannot be extracted through torture or similar means.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

It would seem rather pointless if it went away at death, since back when it was designed, it just meant the White Mantle had to get a monk with a resurrection spell. Then bam, they could torture all those juicy secrets out of the agent.

Can you even resurrect someone who doesn't want to be? I have a hard time thinking that would be the case, and the prospect of coming back only to he tortured seems like it would prevent anyone from wanting to.

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@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

It would seem rather pointless if it went away at death, since back when it was designed, it just meant the White Mantle had to get a monk with a resurrection spell. Then bam, they could torture all those juicy secrets out of the agent.

Can you even resurrect someone who doesn't want to be? I have a hard time thinking that would be the case, and the prospect of coming back only to he tortured seems like it would prevent anyone from wanting to.

With so few rules and behaviors about resurrection being unknown, it's impossible to say whether or not you can forcibly resurrect someone against their will. But given that one can summon a spirit from the Underworld against their consent, I'd imagine so.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@"Eekasqueak.7850" said:If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

It would seem rather pointless if it went away at death, since back when it was designed, it just meant the White Mantle had to get a monk with a resurrection spell. Then bam, they could torture all those juicy secrets out of the agent.

That depends on whether or not you can be resurrected against your will. In some RPGs this is flat out impossible, once the soul has moved on to the afterlife.In all cases of resurrection in GW1 we, the players, obviously wanted to continue playing. As for Balthazar, he had to physically go into the Mists and deploy a soul eater into the domain of the lost to force spirits into his forged army, who didn't even remember their names. On the other hand, those make the perfect brainwashable recruits for that purpose.Palawa Joko apparently invented that technique, but his eaters only disperse the ghosts. The ghosts get mad*, if you repeat that often enough.Zhaitan's undead were not necessarily the same spirits as the originals. The only spirits he could get, were they Royal Family, who are still around even after Zhaitan's death. They have some unfinished business in Orr.

*Understandable, to them it's like being killed in PvP over and over again, which tends to grind even on robust ghosts.

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@Castigator.3470 said:As for Balthazar, he had to physically go into the Mists and deploy a soul eater into the domain of the lost to force spirits into his forged army, who didn't even remember their names. On the other hand, those make the perfect brainwashable recruits for that purpose.

The Eater of Souls wasn't deployed by Balthazar. He took souls from the Dominion of the Lost the same way necromancers, like Joko, would and have. The Eater of Souls is a a demon, a native of the Mists, that simply feasts on souls. That one managed to get into Grenth's domain after Grenth left, leaving the Underworld less defended than before.

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@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:The Eater of Souls wasn't deployed by Balthazar. He took souls from the Dominion of the Lost the same way necromancers, like Joko, would and have. The Eater of Souls is a a demon, a native of the Mists, that simply feasts on souls. That one managed to get into Grenth's domain after Grenth left, leaving the Underworld less defended than before.

Okay. But what happens to the ghosts that get eaten? We are told they disappear forever, but is such an event even possible? We know that it is possible to bind souls for a very long time via bloodstone or even into entities like Gorseval, but after a Gorse-kill Gorseval decays back into the component spirits, so they were not really gone, as they were facettes of a composite entity. The soul eater may be able to separate the life force from the Ghosts, but where do the souls go?

I'm still sceptical that they go directly into /dev/null ,which may have been stated for dramatic effect. But overall the Mists in their infinite space may contain a possibly infinite amount of entities, composite entities, strange beings like Viirastra and since very recently, Kralkatorrik and very likely beings of similar power somewhere far out in the Mists.Maybe the absorbed Ghosts are pushed deep into the Mists into low energy regions, far away from Tyria and other lively places and so lost in the vastness of Space, that from a human perspective they may aswell be lost? But if they manage to traverse a lightyear of distance they may be able to get to a more interesting place? Even with a ghostly Roller Beetle, this is going to take a while*. We simply have no sources on what really happens there, and I doubt that aside from the Inquest many would dare to seek answers to that.The other thing is that defeated ghosts are not killed, they respawn like minecraft players. The foefire ghosts are cursed with blindness and are forced to reconstitute on Tyrian soil, but ghosts like Bria have found ways around the mind control aspect of the Foefire. The ghosts in Orr and Elona are not brainwashed and can be reasoned with. Generally some form of unfinished business keeps them on Tyria, some may stay around to watch over their families, some may transmit information to and from the Mists. Maybe an experienced Revenant could tell us more, but Rytlock is still pretty new to the mist travel aspects of it.

* A long while. A lightyear is 9.46x10¹⁵ metres. Assuming a travel speed of 100 Km/h or 27.77 m/s this takes a time of 3.40x10¹⁴ seconds, or 1.08x10⁷ years, so roughly ten million years to get back into action. And that may not even be the final distance - being lost in the Mists may suck!

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They don't disappear forever immediately. When we kill the Eater of Souls, all the souls it ate escape. We see similar events with various demons in GW1, where killing the demon unleashes the soul. Even cases of souls eaten 200 years prior to the game. But evidence does suggest that after a few centuries of excruciating digestion they cease to exist because just as we burn food for energy, demons would in turn be burning their food (aka souls) for energy. Souls just have more energy before they're burned.

The ghosts aren't pushed anywhere, either, they just sit inside the guts of the demon until digested or freed (via death of the demon). For all intents and purposes, being trapped in a demon's gut, and inside a soul battery which uses souls as an energy source, are the same. Both are maddening and will eventually kill off the soul, it's just that one is organic and the other inorganic (and I'd imagine soul batteries run through souls faster given that the White Mantle killed "thousands" of chosen within a 5 or 2 year span but in the Ring of Fire we only see a few dozen soul batteries being stored).

The only case of "immediate death of souls" we're told about is when Dhuum eats souls. This is suggested, albeit indirectly through all god lore we've gotten, to be due to the fact that gods - and former gods - can absorb any magic and make it part of themselves, as one of the attributes that make them gods (even former mortals like Kormir).

The whole "disappear forever" is because, normally, it's pretty hard to kill a demon supercharged on the power of many souls. The Eater of Souls is talked about as if being a very tough demon, but we're the Commander so that didn't matter, but the chances of someone coming around that could do something when, apparently, The Judge could not would be so abysmally small that for all intents and purposes, defeat would mean the Commander's soul disappearing forever (after a few centuries of tormenting digestion).

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@Castigator.3470 said:

@"Eekasqueak.7850" said:If the consequence is death and that consequence happens anyway I feel like it going away is very heavily implied.

It would seem rather pointless if it went away at death, since back when it was designed, it just meant the White Mantle had to get a monk with a resurrection spell. Then bam, they could torture all those juicy secrets out of the agent.

That depends on whether or not you can be resurrected against your will. In some RPGs this is flat out impossible, once the soul has moved on to the afterlife.In all cases of resurrection in GW1 we, the players, obviously wanted to continue playing. As for Balthazar, he had to physically go into the Mists and deploy a soul eater into the domain of the lost to force spirits into his forged army, who didn't even remember their names. On the other hand, those make the perfect brainwashable recruits for that purpose.Palawa Joko apparently invented that technique, but his eaters only disperse the ghosts. The ghosts get mad*, if you repeat that often enough.Zhaitan's undead were not necessarily the same spirits as the originals. The only spirits he could get, were they Royal Family, who are still around even after Zhaitan's death. They have some unfinished business in Orr.

*Understandable, to them it's like being killed in PvP over and over again, which tends to grind even on robust ghosts.

during human PS, the orders of tyria pact, we summon a spirit of certain pirate - judging from priestess incantations - regardless of the will of said spirit.

so if "gifted" necromancer priestess of grenth can forcibly summon a spirit from the underworld for interrogation in modern tyria (when influence of the six is much weaker than it used to be) I see no issue with monk being able to forcibly shove that spirit into.... well for resurrection it'd be his body of old.

speaking of Palawa Joko - he'd be interesting example on the case - because he does have a record of "awakening" people against their will, and for all intents and purposes we can validate so far - the souls are originals forced back into mumified body running on some sort of unspecified energy.....

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:But evidence does suggest that after a few centuries of excruciating digestion they cease to exist because just as we burn food for energy, demons would in turn be burning their food (aka souls) for energy.

While I would like to agree with that statement for the sake of simplicity, do we really have prove for this? After all, all the cases that were mentioned indicate otherwise. For example, 200 Years seems to be quite a bit of time to devour a soul to me. So what exactly is the evidence you mentioned? To me it looks like demons just like to keep the souls in their stomach, to “feed upon for eternity” (Family Soul), indicating they never finish digesting them. That might also explain why demons regard them such a tasty delicacy - maybe I would also enjoy my food more if I could keep tasting it for all eternity.

This is suggested, albeit indirectly through all god lore we've gotten, to be due to the fact that gods - and former gods - can absorb any magic and make it part of themselves, as one of the attributes that make them gods (even former mortals like Kormir).

We also don’t know what makes someone a god. As promising as the theses sounds, it is mere speculation that gods must fulfil the criteria to be able to “absorb any magic and make it part of themselves”, to be what they are. That the gods decided to govern about different aspects of magic could just as well hint at them having favourite aspects of magic and maybe at the same time incompatibilities for others. We can’t know anything for sure, since we don’t even have a clear definition for the word god in the GW2 universe (and of course many different definitions in our own, but those don’t matter here). All we have to work with is that they all seem to have vast amounts of magic and something like a divine spark/light, but even that is questionable with someone like Dhuum. Speaking of fallen/former gods, if they were able to consume all kinds of magic, wouldn’t Dhuum be able to consume the magic seal keeping him in place? Abaddon even had his full divinity left, why couldn’t he consume Balthazars magical bonds?

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@Nikolai.3648 said:While I would like to agree with that statement for the sake of simplicity, do we really have prove for this? After all, all the cases that were mentioned indicate otherwise.

Not really explicit proof, but we're constantly being told about the finality of a soul being devoured by a demon, despite having on multiple occasions cut up a demon to free the soul. It wouldn't really be all that final, if it was being digested for all eternity.

@Nikolai.3648 said:As promising as the theses sounds, it is mere speculation that gods must fulfil the criteria to be able to “absorb any magic and make it part of themselves”, to be what they are.

Balthazar and Dhuum both show that (former) gods are able to absorb magic without much penalty. And combined, we see them absorbing magic from multiple sources: bloodstone, Elder Dragon, and souls being the prime cases. And unlike mortals who go crazy from exposure to a high concentration of magic, these two do not change in personality or appearance.

@Nikolai.3648 said:That the gods decided to govern about different aspects of magic could just as well hint at them having favourite aspects of magic and maybe at the same time incompatibilities for others.

In regards to the secondary and tritiary domains, this seems to be true. Kormir having no water relevance, while Lyssa picking it up officially after Nightfall, and Dhuum having no relation to ice while Grenth does (and did before ascending into godhood), shows this well. However, the primary domains seem stuck to them - both Grenth and Dhuum were gods of death, even if only one were a god of ice and darkness too; both and Kormir were gods of knowledge, even if only one was a god of water and the other a god of spirit and order.

@Nikolai.3648 said:We can’t know anything for sure, since we don’t even have a clear definition for the word god in the GW2 universe (and of course many different definitions in our own, but those don’t matter here). All we have to work with is that they all seem to have vast amounts of magic and something like a divine spark/light, but even that is questionable with someone like Dhuum.

We don't know if non-Six gods follow the same rules as the Six, but we do have some defined rules for the Six. It's more than simply "have vast amounts of magic". Attributes of the Six include:

These are all established facts that are, if not explicitly stated, shown through the game.

@Nikolai.3648 said:Speaking of fallen/former gods, if they were able to consume all kinds of magic, wouldn’t Dhuum be able to consume the magic seal keeping him in place? Abaddon even had his full divinity left, why couldn’t he consume Balthazars magical bonds?

Presumably just as there is magic the Elder Dragons cannot consume, there'd be magic the Six Gods cannot consume, fallen or not. This is likely why a specific ritual was needed to imprison Dhuum, and Abaddon needed to be restrained by chains forged by Balthazar. Normal magical restraints likely wouldn't have lasted.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:While I would like to agree with that statement for the sake of simplicity, do we really have prove for this? After all, all the cases that were mentioned indicate otherwise.

Not really explicit proof, but we're constantly being told about the finality of a soul being devoured by a demon, despite having on multiple occasions cut up a demon to free the soul. It wouldn't really be all that final, if it was being digested for all eternity.

Yes, we are constantly told that…just for it to be disproven time and time again. I would dare to say that while people ingame think that this is true, it might simply not be the case. There are zero examples of it happening (I will ignore Dhuum here for obvious reasons). I would think there were enough opportunities to show us that souls can’t be rescued at a certain point by now. For example: The judge claims that a soul devoured by the Eater of Souls will simply vanish – but again, we can rescue them all. Why not show us that there were indeed no souls left, only rough energy? It seems suspicious at the very least. At this point, being eternally trapped inside a demon does not only sound far crueller to me (befitting a demon), but also more likely. My quote was taken from the quest about a scarab, but I don’t see any reason for it not also applying to demons.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:As promising as the theses sounds, it is mere speculation that gods must fulfil the criteria to be able to “absorb any magic and make it part of themselves”, to be what they are.

Balthazar and Dhuum both show that (former) gods are able to absorb magic without much penalty. And combined, we see them absorbing magic from multiple sources: bloodstone, Elder Dragon, and souls being the prime cases. And unlike mortals who go crazy from exposure to a high concentration of magic, these two do not change in personality or appearance.

There is a big difference between saying something is an attribute that is needed to be a god and showing that the (former) gods we met also shared a characteristic. There is no definition of what makes a god in GW2, neither ingame nor outside of it, so discussing such things is fruitless at best.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:We don't know if non-Six gods follow the same rules as the Six, but we do have some defined rules [emboldened by me] for the Six. It's more than simply "have vast amounts of magic". Attributes of the Six include:[...]These are all established facts that are, if not explicitly stated, shown through the game.

And here we are again. Those are NOT defined rules. We lack a definition, which was the main point of my post. I would argue that not even all the Gods we encounter share the characteristics you listed there. For example, the blinding aura: Abaddon lacked such an aura. Even in his fallen form, he held his divinity in him. No blinding aura though. We had the blind condition in GW1, which was explicitly not used, so no excuse there. I would go a step further and say that from the 4 (former) gods we interact with, one is totally different from the others: Not only can Dhuum apparently not be killed, he also is able to amaze power in a unique way. We know that Abaddon did not worked in the same way. While I personally really like that character feature, as I think it makes Dhuum appear more of a manifestation of a concept than the other gods (Dhuums only known attribute was after all death, the other ones have multiple layers), it clearly shows that the gods do not follow the same set of rules. You claim that there are many established facts around them, which is true to a certain extent, but there are far more mysteries and differences between them than similarities.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:Speaking of fallen/former gods, if they were able to consume all kinds of magic, wouldn’t Dhuum be able to consume the magic seal keeping him in place? Abaddon even had his full divinity left, why couldn’t he consume Balthazars magical bonds?

Presumably just as there is magic the Elder Dragons cannot consume, there'd be magic the Six Gods cannot consume, fallen or not. This is likely why a specific ritual was needed to imprison Dhuum, and Abaddon needed to be restrained by chains forged by Balthazar. Normal magical restraints likely wouldn't have lasted.

You stated that gods could “absorb any magic”, going as far as to say that it is “one of the attributes that make them gods”. I am surly not cherry picking when I say that divine magic still being magic means that at least with Abaddon we can see this is not the case, which was my point here, showing again that any attempt at defining the human deities is pseudoscientific at best.

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@Nikolai.3648 said:

@Nikolai.3648 said:While I would like to agree with that statement for the sake of simplicity, do we really have prove for this? After all, all the cases that were mentioned indicate otherwise.

Not really explicit proof, but we're constantly being told about the finality of a soul being devoured by a demon, despite having on multiple occasions cut up a demon to free the soul. It wouldn't really be all that final, if it was being digested for all eternity.

Yes, we are constantly told that…just for it to be disproven time and time again. I would dare to say that while people ingame think that this is true, it might simply not be the case. There are zero examples of it happening (I will ignore Dhuum here for obvious reasons). I would think there were enough opportunities to show us that souls can’t be rescued at a certain point by now. For example: The judge claims that a soul devoured by the Eater of Souls will simply vanish – but again, we can rescue them all. Why not show us that there were indeed no souls left, only rough energy? It seems suspicious at the very least. At this point, being eternally trapped inside a demon does not only sound far crueller to me (befitting a demon), but also more likely. My quote was taken from the quest about a scarab, but I don’t see any reason for it not also applying to demons.

@Nikolai.3648 said:As promising as the theses sounds, it is mere speculation that gods must fulfil the criteria to be able to “absorb any magic and make it part of themselves”, to be what they are.

Balthazar and Dhuum both show that (former) gods are able to absorb magic without much penalty. And combined, we see them absorbing magic from multiple sources: bloodstone, Elder Dragon, and souls being the prime cases. And unlike mortals who go crazy from exposure to a high concentration of magic, these two do not change in personality or appearance.

There is a big difference between saying something is an attribute that is needed to be a god and showing that the (former) gods we met also shared a characteristic. There is no definition of what makes a god in GW2, neither ingame nor outside of it, so discussing such things is fruitless at best.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:We don't know if non-Six gods follow the same rules as the Six, but we do have some
defined rules
[emboldened by me] for the Six. It's more than simply "have vast amounts of magic". Attributes of the Six include:
[...]
These are all established facts that are, if not explicitly stated, shown through the game.

And here we are again. Those are NOT
defined rules
. We lack a definition, which was the main point of my post. I would argue that not even all the Gods we encounter share the characteristics you listed there. For example, the blinding aura: Abaddon lacked such an aura. Even in his fallen form, he held his divinity in him. No blinding aura though. We had the blind condition in GW1, which was explicitly not used, so no excuse there. I would go a step further and say that from the 4 (former) gods we interact with, one is totally different from the others: Not only can Dhuum apparently not be killed, he also is able to amaze power in a unique way. We know that Abaddon did not worked in the same way. While I personally really like that character feature, as I think it makes Dhuum appear more of a manifestation of a concept than the other gods (Dhuums only known attribute was after all death, the other ones have multiple layers), it clearly shows that the gods do not follow the same set of rules. You claim that there are many established facts around them, which is true to a certain extent, but there are far more mysteries and differences between them than similarities.

@Nikolai.3648 said:Speaking of fallen/former gods, if they were able to consume all kinds of magic, wouldn’t Dhuum be able to consume the magic seal keeping him in place? Abaddon even had his full divinity left, why couldn’t he consume Balthazars magical bonds?

Presumably just as there is magic the Elder Dragons cannot consume, there'd be magic the Six Gods cannot consume, fallen or not. This is likely why a specific ritual was needed to imprison Dhuum, and Abaddon needed to be restrained by chains forged by Balthazar. Normal magical restraints likely wouldn't have lasted.

You stated that gods could “absorb
any
magic”, going as far as to say that it is “one of the attributes that make them gods”. I am surly not cherry picking when I say that divine magic still being magic means that at least with Abaddon we can see this is not the case, which was my point here, showing again that any attempt at defining the human deities is pseudoscientific at best.

We only see the blinding thing from Kormir and I assume it to be an attribute of hers. Related to how she was blinded in her mortal life. Also justice is blind, etc

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@Eekasqueak.7850 said:We only see the blinding thing from Kormir and I assume it to be an attribute of hers. Related to how she was blinded in her mortal life. Also justice is blind, etc

I would love this to be true, since it fits her perfectly, but there was the whole Statue of the Gods story that basically stated that the blinding effect was true for all of the 6 “original” (meaning the 6 that stepped foot on Tyria first) gods, which Konig is most likely referring to.

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The blinding effect, honestly, does feel like something Arenanet thought of post-Nightfall.

However, it is possible that somewhere between Malchor and Nightfall, the gods found a way to prevent the blinding effect, or at least slow it down enough to be able to fight Abaddon with out it being a factor. - and that's what the blessing they bestowed on the GW1 heroes was for. The effect also seems to be gradual: Malchor was able to keep his sight long enough to sculpt the gods, for instance, although he was never satisfied with Dwayna's, while the dimming of our vision while talking to Kormir isn't enough to actually stop us from seeing the illusions she uses to tell her story. The battle with Abaddon may have simply been too brief for it to be a major factor (and the region you fight that battle in is pretty dark, so maybe that actually was ArenaNet trying to show 'your vision is dimming but not enough to justify a 90% miss chance').

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@"Nikolai.3648" said:Yes, we are constantly told that…just for it to be disproven time and time again. I would dare to say that while people ingame think that this is true, it might simply not be the case. There are zero examples of it happening (I will ignore Dhuum here for obvious reasons). I would think there were enough opportunities to show us that souls can’t be rescued at a certain point by now. For example: The judge claims that a soul devoured by the Eater of Souls will simply vanish – but again, we can rescue them all. Why not show us that there were indeed no souls left, only rough energy? It seems suspicious at the very least. At this point, being eternally trapped inside a demon does not only sound far crueller to me (befitting a demon), but also more likely. My quote was taken from the quest about a scarab, but I don’t see any reason for it not also applying to demons.

I wouldn't say the few times we kill a demon to let souls out is disproving the notion at all. With the exception of the Family Matters quest in GW1, all named souls we rescue were recently devoured; and in the case of the Family Matters quest, it isn't a demon we kill but a scarab. Demons and scarabs may function differently when they devour souls for all we know, as one is a Tyrian born creature while the other is a creature born from malignant energies in the Mists. There's zero reason to believe they function at all the same. We have no way to know just how long ago those souls the Eater of Souls, etc. that we witness being freed were devoured.

The only way to really disprove the notion is to be told that X Soul was devoured centuries ago by Y Demon, and we kill Y Demon and free X Soul who's perfectly fine. But even if X Soul doesn't show up, how do we prove it isn't just a case of "Oh, X Soul was actually in Z Demon after all".

@"Nikolai.3648" said:And here we are again. Those are NOT defined rules. We lack a definition, which was the main point of my post. I would argue that not even all the Gods we encounter share the characteristics you listed there. For example, the blinding aura: Abaddon lacked such an aura. Even in his fallen form, he held his divinity in him. No blinding aura though. We had the blind condition in GW1, which was explicitly not used, so no excuse there. I would go a step further and say that from the 4 (former) gods we interact with, one is totally different from the others: Not only can Dhuum apparently not be killed, he also is able to amaze power in a unique way. We know that Abaddon did not worked in the same way. While I personally really like that character feature, as I think it makes Dhuum appear more of a manifestation of a concept than the other gods (Dhuums only known attribute was after all death, the other ones have multiple layers), it clearly shows that the gods do not follow the same set of rules. You claim that there are many established facts around them, which is true to a certain extent, but there are far more mysteries and differences between them than similarities.

When four+ gods show the same set of characteristics, despite being drastically different entities, they are defined rules. We don't need something in writing for it to be defined.

As for the blinding aura on Abaddon: that didn't exist in the lore in GW1, it was added to the lore with GW2, and Anet never went back to add it in (as is oft the case for their treatment of old gameplay). This is what one would call a retroactive continuity issue. It was made part of the lore for GW2, and when the devs were asked about Abaddon they had replied along the lines of "like when Malchor rested his eyes between sculpting the gods before Dwayna, GW1 players didn't look upon Abaddon long enough to go blind." This was, iirc, on GuildWars2Guru forums so with them down it'd be pretty much impossible to find the source, unfortunately.

About Dhuum: Technically speaking, nothing says Dhuum is immortal; what is said is that Grenth wasn't able to kill him. Now this may mean he is unable to die (if so, based on his model, this may be because his body already broke apart but for some unexplained reason his soul maintained form; perhaps because he was the god of death), just that Grenth couldn't kill him when usurping him and decided to imprison him. Given the catastrophic nature of killing even former gods, Grenth and/or the Reapers may have decided to simply keep him imprisoned and alive than risk his magic going rampant for xyz reason. However, I would note that his body having already broken apart and yet still being alive wouldn't be all that unique, as Abaddon's body was destroyed in his defeat at the Crystal Desert in Year 0; the body we see in Nightfall was being created out of the landscape of the Realm of Torment. Dhuum is also not unique in taking power from souls, as we have a parable of Balthazar eating a soul, and just as Kormir states her personality was a mix of Abaddon's and her former mortal personality, Balthazar states in the parable that the personality of the soul will be forever a part of him.

@"Nikolai.3648" said:You stated that gods could “absorb any magic”, going as far as to say that it is “one of the attributes that make them gods”. I am surly not cherry picking when I say that divine magic still being magic means that at least with Abaddon we can see this is not the case, which was my point here, showing again that any attempt at defining the human deities is pseudoscientific at best.

Being hung up on my exact wording is cherry picking.

"The gods can absorb almost any magic, and do so safely." - is that better?

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