(Spoilers inside) Suspicious issues with Lyssa

Am I the only one who notices that an awful lot of vague hints about Lyssa gets dropped?

1. Lyssa's Mirror - we still don't get any info on how Balthazar got it.
2. Lyssa's reluctance to stripping Balthazar of his power (eventually "even" she agreed to the plan, according to Kormir)
3. Finally, Balthazar in his last moments curses each of the gods by name, one by one... but doesn't mention Lyssa at all.

Coincidences? Or might there be more to the picture?

Little is known about the origin of Lyssa. Same counts for Balthazar. They might be related or something like that. But that is all speculating, i hope we get more info from Anet. Because these things clearly indicate something is going on between the two.

I hope they don't pull a Abbadon 3.0 on us.

Lyssa loves us and she will come save us from all things evil <3

On a serious note, Lyssa loves us.

On a more serious note, (I haven't replayed PoF on an alt yet, just started the second run through) but the five demoted balthazar, so shouldn't another take his place? Balthazar didn't curse that one either, so maybe he doesn't know who it is... Or maybe Lyssa isn't Lyssa anymore, but split into Ilya and Lyss and they're taking the place of two gods.. That's an interesting thought!

And nah you're not the only one who noticed, I've mentioned in another thread, think it's called [spoilers] Human Gods but can't remember.

I wouldn't label the use of "even Lyssa" as Lyssa being reluctant to stripping Balthazar's power. It could mean that usually she's neutral in such standings, but this time she wasn't - thus "even the odd one out agreed".

I'm also not entirely sure that Balthazar doesn't curse Lyssa. He curses the gods rather slowly and you can very easily interrupt him at the end (every point he becomes invulnerable and you need Aurene special skill to make him vulnerable again, you can interrupt him - Anet's been adding a lot of these "don't have to listen to all the dialogue" moments recently).

I specifically listened to his whole dialogue and let him almost kill myself to get confirmation. He mentions only 4 of the 5 in order: Dwayna, Melandru, Grenth, Kormir and then adds: May the fires take you all. If we fail to kill him we have to repeat the combo with Aurene and he repeats the whole dialogue. No mention of Lyssa altogether.

Sure that might have been intentional just to shorten the dialogue etc. but I'm not convinced.

@Invidia.9074 said:I specifically listened to his whole dialogue and let him almost kill myself to get confirmation. He mentions only 4 of the 5 in order: Dwayna, Melandru, Grenth, Kormir and then adds: May the fires take you all. If we fail to kill him we have to repeat the combo with Aurene and he repeats the whole dialogue. No mention of Lyssa altogether.

Sure that might have been intentional just to shorten the dialogue etc. but I'm not convinced.

THAT'S WHAT WAS MISSING FROM THAT DIALOGUE AND WHY IT FELT WEIRD.

I can confirm that this is true, I run a low damage/high survival build on my main so i managed to listen to most of the dialogue because i could only slowly kill balthazar.

Lyssa's mirror, Kormir's 'even Lyssa' on top of not mentioning her during those final moments. There's something there. I don't entirely believe it's something critical to the story, more than likely it's either her reluctance to strip balthazar or her mostly neutral stance on the matter. It might even have been Lyssa who granted Balthazar the mirror as some sort of apology like "my actions were necessary, but i'm sorry I had to go through with them, here's a gift" kind of thing. I doubt she planned for Balthazar to ever be released, nor I think could she have imagined Balthazar, the god of direct confrontation, to utilize deception as he did after being cast down. He ultimately did, citing that he no longer sees the honor in war which should be a major character shift, but 'being a donkey (censor)' seems to be his defining trait even before he was cast down in PoF (you'd think the god of war would see the catastrophic destruction of Tyria as a war that was lost, dishonorable and nonstrategic in every way).

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:I wouldn't label the use of "even Lyssa" as Lyssa being reluctant to stripping Balthazar's power. It could mean that usually she's neutral in such standings, but this time she wasn't - thus "even the odd one out agreed".

I'm also not entirely sure that Balthazar doesn't curse Lyssa. He curses the gods rather slowly and you can very easily interrupt him at the end (every point he becomes invulnerable and you need Aurene special skill to make him vulnerable again, you can interrupt him - Anet's been adding a lot of these "don't have to listen to all the dialogue" moments recently).

He doesn't. I listened to his whole rant and Lyssa is not mentioned by Balthazar. He is cursing them all but he leaves out Lyssa for some reason.

It really wouldn't surprise me if there was some level of discontent among the 6(besides Balthazar going off the deep end) about the decision to leave Tyria to its fate.

Lyssa always had a stronger tie to mortals then the others, and ancient texts say she lived among humans until Arah was completed, and that the other gods basically told her she had too leave them to live in Arah, despite not really wanting too.

It really wouldn't surprise me if she did something to help Baltahzar, even if she may not have known just what he was going to do.

It's not too unreasonable to think the decision to cast out Balthazar involved some debate. I'm sure it's a pretty huge decision, that took a lot of arguing and Lyssa might have just been the longest to hold out on it. Also, it could be alluding to the fact that Lyssa might not be the most predictable of gods, so her getting on board with a decision might just be a little surprising. But when you couple that with the fact that Balthazar did have her mirror and he didn't mention her in his ending villain speech, (like, at all. This didn't seem like a "you interrupted him" kind of thing. The only non-lore related excuse is that the developers just had a stupidly huge oversight) it becomes a little suspicious.

Maybe Lyssa is already dead?

There's a number of things I find odd about the entire Balthazar chained up in the Mists/Lyssa's mirror situation - either it's 'oh-so-convenient' writing or there's a bigger picture.

Rytlock actually stumbling upon his sword. Though we can't say for sure how big that particular area of The Mists is or how long Rytlock was travelling for, since he himself doesn't know (which makes sense), I still find it very convenient he happened to find it. Not only that, but the sword just so happened to end up right next to a chained up ex-God. Again, could just be coincidence - it happens! This shouts for how incompetent the Gods are, but hey, maybe they just don't care.

The other thing I find odd is that a portal back to Tyria just so happens to open the moment Balth's chains are cut. Could Balthazar have enough power to open a portal up? Possibly - he relit Sohothin and ended up reforging his armour the moment he was free, but I wonder why he didn't just open up a portal anyway and hope someone stumbles upon him through it and free him. Could be a number of reasons why - he can't guarantee what ends up arriving and it could kill him in his defenceless state for one, but still, a little bit odd.

He gets Lyssa's mirror after he was freed to hide himself from the other Gods and general Tyrian citizens until he absorbed enough power. He could have obtained this from her reliquary in Orr, or he could have obtained this somewhere in The Mists from her domain, or it could just be as simple as Lyssa left it with him when he was chained up for...some reason...but we don't know - there's no answer for it. Regardless, Balthazar can't just go wandering through the streets of DR asking if anyone's seen something like it, so he'd have to obtain it relatively early on in the process.

Then there's the obvious clue in that he doesn't curse Lyssa in the final battle. This could just be a bug or forgotten line which is meant to be there, which would be a really unfortunate coincidence OR there's a reason he didn't. He's not completely devoid of having compassion for those who helped him after-all, even in his rage. He was quite willing to leave Rytlock alive when we first fight him despite Rytlock being on our side of the fight.

Lyssa is actually two entities, Ilya and Lyss. They are usually depicted conjoined, and refered to as singular. If one twin supported the Gods, and the other Balthazar it wouldn't surprise me. They are the goddess of duality and illusion after all.

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:Lyssa is actually two entities, Ilya and Lyss. They are usually depicted conjoined, and refered to as singular. If one twin supported the Gods, and the other Balthazar it wouldn't surprise me. They are the goddess of duality and illusion after all.

Facing one of the twin Goddesses at full power would be the natural progression of the story after taking on Balthazar and/or Kralkatorrik empowered by some of Balthazar's Magic(Bloodstone Magic and the Dragon Magic that Taimi's device claimed from Primordius and Jormag). I wonder which one of the twins has the Water Elemental Magic...

It would be interesting if the Goddess were to use Purple Illusions and Blue Water against us. Would make a nice contrast to Balthazar who just used Purple and Orange Fire.

@"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:It really wouldn't surprise me if there was some level of discontent among the 6(besides Balthazar going off the deep end) about the decision to leave Tyria to its fate.

Lyssa always had a stronger tie to mortals then the others, and ancient texts say she lived among humans until Arah was completed, and that the other gods basically told her she had too leave them to live in Arah, despite not really wanting too.

It really wouldn't surprise me if she did something to help Baltahzar, even if she may not have known just what he was going to do.

Well, you'd think Kormir would have a connection at least as strong as Lyssa, actually having been a human herself, but that's actually a good point.

Something I found interesting about Balthazar this expansion is that he wasn't "evil" in the sense that his actions were out of malice or some desire to destroy the world. It turns out that, as the God of War, he simply couldn't resist a war on a godly level. He couldn't resist fighting the Elder Dragons because that's simply his nature.

On that note, it's possible that Lyssa's hesitation in leaving was similar. For whatever reason, it's in her nature to have a connection to the mortals. It's possible she helped Balthazar on purpose because she hoped that him fighting the Elder Dragons would help the mortals. Further, I think it's possible, then, that she might have stayed behind as well, because of her nature. Of course, the other gods thought she left with them, but there are several ways she could have pulled that off. As goddess of illusions, perhaps she simply faked it. On the other hand, perhaps they pulled a twin trick, and only Ilya or Lyss actually left in order for the other to assist the mortals.

@Jokubas.4265 said:Well, you'd think Kormir would have a connection at least as strong as Lyssa, actually having been a human herself, but that's actually a good point.

Something I found interesting about Balthazar this expansion is that he wasn't "evil" in the sense that his actions were out of malice or some desire to destroy the world. It turns out that, as the God of War, he simply couldn't resist a war on a godly level. He couldn't resist fighting the Elder Dragons because that's simply his nature.

On that note, it's possible that Lyssa's hesitation in leaving was similar. For whatever reason, it's in her nature to have a connection to the mortals. It's possible she helped Balthazar on purpose because she hoped that him fighting the Elder Dragons would help the mortals. Further, I think it's possible, then, that she might have stayed behind as well, because of her nature. Of course, the other gods thought she left with them, but there are several ways she could have pulled that off. As goddess of illusions, perhaps she simply faked it. On the other hand, perhaps they pulled a twin trick, and only Ilya or Lyss actually left in order for the other to assist the mortals.Kormir did, which is why she was the least to leave. Something Lyssa apparently mocked her for. She also mentions that she and her librarians can do no less then keep all the knowledge they have in order, despite the trouble of doing so, because it is a record of everything that was. Which suggests she might have seen her vast library as a means of saving at least the memory of the world, even if she couldn't save the world itself.

As for Lyssa, the Orrian History Scrolls say that Lyssa brought with her the hope and beauty of humanity, and that it was Lyssa who gave humans joy so that they could forget their past. In a rather funny bit of irony, it was the memory of being human, and having hope, that kept Kormir around so long. Perhaps Lyssa being the bringer of hope herself that caused her to have such sympathies. Lyssa's mocking for Komir either being a cover up to hide her true sympathies by towing the party line, or some form of coping mechanism.

sorry for the bump, but the problem with this line of reasoning "Lyssa helped Balthazar because Lyssa loves humans", is that if Balthazar succeeded, it would mean the end of Tyria and humans. Not to mention his promise to take the power of the Elder Dragons to take revenge on the Gods.

If her devinity as twin goddess with some contradicting features keep her on a neutral Position cuz she sides with both sides of a coin so to speakThat could mean that she is usually in conflict with herself all the Time and evaluating every decision over and overSo if she is forced to Act it could be in her nature not to Act one sided but try to keep the acts BalancedThat would mean she gave balthazar the mirror on her own.

Another thought could be that balthazar took her mirror by force and Killed her while empowering himself.I doubt this Version cuz I dont think that the "missing" of one of the other god would Not ne noticed by the rest for a longer Time. And it does not fit with the dialogues in kormir library without some heavy stretching of Interpretation.

We May not know how long balthazar was chained up but I got the Impression that it did not happen recently so maybe 50-150 years back already. Even for gods this should be a considerable Time to notice if 1 of em dissapeared

Well in the end we can suggest pretty much everything cuz we just dont have enough information

https://i.imgur.com/Qc9aEF4.png

That is the alchemical representation of the relationship between Lyssa and Balthazar. Why Lyssa as presented as twins/double headed because of the double points of the reverse crescent moon. And she plays with the Mind, making people lunatic. Thus the reverse crescent moon (Reverse Luna). While Balthazar is the God of Fire, which in the Picture is represented by the Sun.

They , when combined together, makes the highest quality metal. Platinum. So there is an inside, unbreakable amicable relationship between the 2 [1], which can be understood by Abaddon, the God of Water and Secrets. Water in alchemy the Crescent Moon which is Silver. and platinum's etymology comes from the word Platina or little silver.

[1] "Finally, Balthazar in his last moments curses each of the gods by name, one by one... but doesn't mention Lyssa at all."

On 10/2/2017 at 10:02 AM, castlemanic.3198 said:

THAT'S WHAT WAS MISSING FROM THAT DIALOGUE AND WHY IT FELT WEIRD.

I can confirm that this is true, I run a low damage/high survival build on my main so i managed to listen to most of the dialogue because i could only slowly kill balthazar.

Lyssa's mirror, Kormir's 'even Lyssa' on top of not mentioning her during those final moments. There's something there. I don't entirely believe it's something critical to the story, more than likely it's either her reluctance to strip balthazar or her mostly neutral stance on the matter. It might even have been Lyssa who granted Balthazar the mirror as some sort of apology like "my actions were necessary, but i'm sorry I had to go through with them, here's a gift" kind of thing. I doubt she planned for Balthazar to ever be released, nor I think could she have imagined Balthazar, the god of direct confrontation, to utilize deception as he did after being cast down. He ultimately did, citing that he no longer sees the honor in war which should be a major character shift, but 'being a donkey (censor)' seems to be his defining trait even before he was cast down in PoF (you'd think the god of war would see the catastrophic destruction of Tyria as a war that was lost, dishonorable and nonstrategic in every way).

Agree! Lyssa is my fav god so I think when she voted to strip him she gave him the mirror as a token of remembrance/affection etc. It couldn't break him from the chains and I don't think there was an intent to aid him directly but he, the god of fire and war used her token in a destructive way when he got the chance. Even though Rytlock didn't know much about Balth it wouldn't surprise me if he used some of the mirror magic to make his regular appearance just a bit more frail and nonconfrontational. Even egomaniacal rage filled tyrants have moment of lucidity and him not damning Lyssa was one of those moments. I don't think its anything much more than that.

Completely baseless speculation:

Perhaps Balthazar and lyssa at some point became lovers, and perhaps their offspring is the one that replaced Balthazar as a god

Although i dont know exactly how that would work with lyssa technically being 2 entities, but who knows

Theres definitely "something" going on there that anet is deliberately teasing at

Probably unrelated, but queen Jennahs unexplored past and her seeming to be one of the most powerful mesmers we've ever seen before for no apparent reason was always kinda fishy 

39 minutes ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

Completely baseless speculation:

Perhaps Balthazar and lyssa at some point became lovers, and perhaps their offspring is the one that replaced Balthazar as a god

Although i dont know exactly how that would work with lyssa technically being 2 entities, but who knows

Theres definitely "something" going on there that anet is deliberately teasing at

Probably unrelated, but queen Jennahs unexplored past and her seeming to be one of the most powerful mesmers we've ever seen before for no apparent reason was always kinda fishy 

On a side note, Countess Anise likes to refer to persons of interest as 'pets'. This strikes as a very god/goddess-esque habit to me. 

2 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

On a side note, Countess Anise likes to refer to persons of interest as 'pets'. This strikes as a very god/goddess-esque habit to me. 

Yeah, I've always thought there was room for the theory that both Anise and Queen Jennah are two halves of lyssa in disguise but there really isn't a whole lot of evidence to support it but it does seem pretty plausible.

They are both incredibly powerful female mesmers that have unexplained pasts, they work together in tandem as guardians of humanity/kryta while both having very polarized roles and personalities with Queen Jennah being the public facing compassionate ruler whereas Anise handles the secret affairs of the kingdom while having a much harsher personality.

ಠ_ಠ

This may not be much, but this is what one finds in description of Vision: 
 

Quote

They killed him. Balthazar. If Lyssa ever learns of this...I don't know what she'd do—what any of them would do. They still claim benevolence, but let's hope they weren't watching too closely.

Now, I don't know how credible a description of a legendary trinket is, but this, again, emphasises Lyssa's relation to Balthazar. And that the gods probably don't know of his death.
If Lyssa, either alone or with the other gods, comes seeking vengence on us, I think it would make for a neat story and an excuse to see them again and see some development.

While she is known for her love for mortals, I don't know how she would react to this. I believe that giving ye ol' Balth the mirror was her wanting him to succeed at his plans, or at least live under an illusion of his (or her???) choice. I imagine getting the news about him dead would be at least annoying (provided she gets the news in... wherever she is now). 

On 12/20/2021 at 1:58 PM, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

On a side note, Countess Anise likes to refer to persons of interest as 'pets'. This strikes as a very god/goddess-esque habit to me. 

On 12/20/2021 at 3:15 PM, Kayberz.5346 said:

Yeah, I've always thought there was room for the theory that both Anise and Queen Jennah are two halves of lyssa in disguise but there really isn't a whole lot of evidence to support it but it does seem pretty plausible.

They are both incredibly powerful female mesmers that have unexplained pasts, they work together in tandem as guardians of humanity/kryta while both having very polarized roles and personalities with Queen Jennah being the public facing compassionate ruler whereas Anise handles the secret affairs of the kingdom while having a much harsher personality.

One Path Ends pretty much confirms that Anise is Livia's (grand?)daughter. It's not said explicitly, but the analogy is made straight-up, that Anise follows Livia's orders "like a grown child to a parent."

And it's not like Jennah's someone who can be easily replaced, esp. with a team of mesmers and other soldiers watching her at all times.

Anise and Jennah may be "powerful mesmers" but they're nowhere near god-level or even demigod level.

As for "Lyssa giving Balthazar the mirror". The fact Balthazar went to Siren's Landing to hide the aspect of Lazarus so that his disguise wasn't foiled, but wasn't disguised when he showed up there, indicates that he didn't have the mirror there - he looted more than just his own Reliquary, so he likely got the mirror from Lyssa's reliquary in Siren's Landing, and not from Lyssa herself.