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Balthazar in PoF


Crystal Black.8190

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I don't really understand some of the story points around him.

Balthazar wants to kill the dragons and safe the world from them, but that's actually what will destroy them, because of magical imbalance. The human gods don't seem to care at all about the world they invested hundreds of years in, except balthazar. Kormirs argument seems hollow. If they would stop Balthazar from killing the dragons it could create another crystal desert or worse, so they just will let it happen which will destroy the world for sure. Kormir is basically telling us that they would prefer a destroyed world than a world that gets a little bit damaged in a fight.

So if Balthazar's goal is to kill the dragons why is he attacking civilian settlements? I can understand the fights between his forged and the awakened, because they probably hindered him at executing his plan, but what does he gain from attacking innocent humans? He is their god, couldn't he just go to them and ask for their support? He could even recruit the sunspears because he has to fight awakened anyway and imprisoned joko. Why isn't he portrait as the savior that imprisoned joko and liberates elona from him?

As a god why doesn't he know that killing dragons destroys the world? He must has been around for a long time and while the forgotten, glint, the asura etc. figured that out the gods didn't? Or did he have a plan to protect Tyria from the magic that gets released from a dead dragon?

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First mistake: Balthazar doesn't care about saving the world. At first, he uses this as a pretense, but drops it for Path of Fire except in recruitment. Balthazar says so himself at the real finale of S3 that he doesn't care about Tyria or Tyrians. He's fully aware that destroying the Elder Dragons will destroy Tyria - he just doesn't care.

Balthazar's goal is to get revenge on the Six Gods for stripping him of his divinity and power. To get revenge, he needs to absorb magic; first he targets the Maguuma Bloodstone, then he goes after Primordus (and via Taimi's Machine, gets some magic from Jormag too). He goes after Kralkatorrik since Primordus and Jormag went into a protective hibernation state. The reason why he's attacking civilians (besides the fact that they wanted to emphasize his fall from grace and that he's turned evil) is because he wanted to build an army loyal (or more accurately, enslaved) to him. Those civilians he kills, he then traps their souls to make new Forged that are enslaved to his will - why ask for their support when he could make even the sick and elderly fight for him by force? (Because he's now suddenly evil that's why)

And the reasons for him turning evil is idiotic - it's contrived and poorly thought out and even more poorly explained. TL;DR he got bored of no fighting so he wanted to fight the Elder Dragons regardless of consequences because it was the first "real" fight since Abaddon; the other gods disagreed and Balthazar went fullblown spoiled manchild and threatened to kill / enslave the other gods because they're "cowards" (aka because they don't want to destroy Tyria); in turn the gods overpowered Balthazar in the Mists, stripped him of his power and divinity, and imprisoned the now former god (until Rytlock freed him), leading Balthazar to want nothing but to kill the other gods and "become the one true god" (just like Abaddon! - literally, PoF is basically Nightfall rehashed, but in an asinine and illogical development).

The gods do care, but they recognize the hazards of staying around. If they stuck around, they'd have to directly confront the Elder Dragons. If they won, the world would die; if they lost, the world would be destroyed. Them staying was a literal lose-lose situation, so they departed to look for a new inhabitable world to bring Tyrians to while the Forgotten went with their plan to replace the Elder Dragons with more benevolent beings.

People tend to overlook the true reason of the gods' lack of involvement for Kormir's outraged statements that indirectly explain that gods involvement in any combat leads to devastation. When suggested that Kormir do all the work for them (as that's basically what the Commander asked), she got mildly pissed off and the Sanctum began shaking and crumbling; this was to emphasize that a god fighting would be devastating because it's basically bringing a nuke to a gun fight. The gods apparently have a very high "minimum power usage" bar, and as such it is more ideal for mortals to confront a demigod like Balthazar (or the Elder Dragons) because then the devastation would be worse, and there's the implied "you can't rely on others / the gods to bail you out" message that's been present since Nightfall.

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As mentioned Balthazar never cared for Tyria and any gestures of sportsmanship towards those who beat him at games are rare. The only changes resulting from his imprisonment was losing his reckless attitude and gaining pragmatism in his goals. His Priests the Zaishen drew on a much kinder source of power that protected others while he was imprisoned.

The only God who was endangering Tyria out of apparent caring was Abaddon who was trying to generously share Magic for the sake of Tyrians only to have said Magic locked away upon which he waged war on the Gods over, got beaten at the Crystal Sea creating the Crystal Desert and Desolation and got locked up by mad Balthazar who never cared for Tyria but only wanted war.

Imprisonment and Torment(due to Balthazar's cruelty when designing the chains of binding) drove Abaddon to Madness and desperate attempts to free himself such as eliminating the Emperor of Cantha, sinking Orr(which was dedicated to his jailers who tortured him), releasing the Titans serving Dhuum's Fury, making deals with Dhuum, allying with Menzies(who is just as mad as his half-brother Balthazar) and having the Margonites wipe out the Priests of the 5 Gods who left him in torment.

Abaddon became the monster he was because of Balthazar's cruelty when imprisoning him and Abaddon's death awakening the Elder Dragons then revealed Balthazar's true colors resulting in the Gods imprisoning him(with less tormenting chains than Balthazar himself preferred for his enemies) and stripping him of power where they didn't concerning Abaddon. Balthazar's fate at our hands was long in coming.

The story of Balthazar(including the part where he forged the chains of Abaddon who is described as being in Torment in his prison) reveals him to be the primary cause of GW1 and 2 including the Elder Dragon rise itself.

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The issue lies in the understanding of the All."According to Ogden Stonehealer, the All is undefinable as beings can only grasp portions of it, and even the Elder Dragons are small relative to the All. Beings can only see certain layers of the Mists, the Elders, and Tyria while anything beyond that is hidden from their senses." ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_All )

the second issue is the consideration how allmighty a deity is. We know that anyone can rise to godhood (Kormir, Grenth) and also a deity like an elder dragon can be taken over by a lesser dragon. So just like normal beings, it can be asusmed that a god can not understand the all as well.

The all also goes beyond Tyria and the destruction of Tyria is not the worse thing that can happen to the All. It would likely be insignificant to the bigger pictureThe last thing is that Gods feel elevated beyond regular beings.So why is this of importance?

Balthazar is the god of war. He doesnt care about one being more or less. His true philosphy is never shared (afaik), but most gods of war sees destruction as a way to cleanse the existence of all and recreate it. However he doesnt understand the all fully as well. So it is simular to the debate between the orders, how to tackle things. most Gods do not think it is wise to interfere with the elder dragons as they do not hold a proper solution or cause it would cost more then it would be desired.Balthazar disagrees, he sees the destruction as an opportunity to create something new. With him as the only all powerfull deity (after he was abbanded by the other Gods).

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@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

The gods do care, but they recognize the hazards of staying around. If they stuck around, they'd have to directly confront the Elder Dragons. If they won, the world would die; if they lost, the world would be destroyed. Them staying was a literal lose-lose situation, so they departed to look for a new inhabitable world to bring Tyrians to while the Forgotten went with their plan to replace the Elder Dragons with more benevolent beings.

I agree the evidence points towards the gods being unable to solve the threat of the dragons themselves. I'm not sure it points towards them meaningfully caring. Even if direct intervention was out of the question, they had other aid they could offer: the Eternals, the Reapers, hell, even just the right information before it was too late. How much better would our odds be now if they'd sent an avatar and clued Kryta in to the fact that Glint had a plan? If the kingdom worked as a willing partner towards developing it? At the very least, we probably would've been more careful with our prospective replacements- maybe, say, not getting two out of the three of them accidentally killed?

And then there's the afterlives. No Elder Dragons there, but at minimum Grenth and Kormir abandoned the souls in their trust to the kinds of enemies that we know the gods were willing to ward against. If it wasn't for Desmina fighting tooth and nail to avoid submitting, it's very possible Dhuum could've brought an end to Tyria faster than the dragons would've. What was stopping the gods from consolidating realms, and leaving one or two of their number behind to watch over the dead while the rest went seeking?

That doesn't read like the gods caring. It reads like them writing off Tyria, and the portion of humanity encompassed by it and the adjoining afterlives, as a lost cause. I'm willing to believe that they might come back to check if there's anything left to save once they find a new place, but the fact that they aren't taking seemingly straightforward measures to make that scenario more likely suggests it doesn't make too much difference to them. Kormir's own journal suggests that whatever they're doing, it's explicitly more important to them than the fate of humans.

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@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:-snip-

There is a certain level of indifference that is no doubt part of the gods being individuals of a different plane of existence. They certainly could have done more, but at the same time, humanity had everything they needed.... until Abaddon blew it up (Arah vaults). There's also that level of "they don't want humanity to depend on them by solving all their problems" attitude they have.

As to them lending the Reapers and other avatars - they were needed to continue guarding the afterlives after the gods left. While Kormir's Sanctum did suffer an immediate issue of being overrun, the Sanctum recovered enough by A Star to Guide Us according to Nenah. I would also very much disagree that "Grenth and Kormir abandoned the souls in their trust to the kinds of enemies that we know the gods were willing to ward against". While it's true the Sanctum had an issue, there's no evidence that other places did - except for when Dhuum escaped and Kralkatorrik ravaged the Mists. Even before Grenth left, there were issues like the Eater of Souls in the Underworld as we could see during the Halloween underworld quests in GW1, so our trip to the Domain of the Lost and the "issues" there were par the course even when gods were around.

We also do not know that the gods knew Glint had a plan. The Forgotten knew of it, yes, but did they ever tell the gods who had left the world by over a millennia by the time the Forgotten began actively working on that plan?

The only fault I see of the gods, is that of Dhuum and Balthazar. But when they left, they were both still imprisoned. With individuals watching the situation that had means to prevent further escape.

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From Glint's memory crystals, it does seem to me that the gods had a pretty good idea.

That said, the secrecy isn't just on the gods - Glint herself could have sent some sort of envoy to Kryta to let them know what she was doing. Instead, she relies on the Forgotten, the Brotherhood, the Zephyrites, and the Exalted, while apparently explicitly keeping her activities secret from Kryta (the Zephyrites explicitly avoided recruiting from Kryta, for instance).

I suspect that Glint was aware that there were still problems in Kryta and that revealing her plans to Kryta might mean revealing them to the White Mantle, which might then attempt to co-opt them in some manner, or making her plans known to the Krytans might have lead to Zhaitan or another Elder Dragon learning of them, or some other disaster foreseen through her power of prophecy. Whatever her motives, Glint certainly seems to have wanted to keep her plans on the down-low, and it's possible that the gods not filling humans in was due to Glint's wishes.

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As draxynnic said, Glint is also pretty guilty of not telling the mortals everything that she knew. The Spirits of the Wild are 'guilty' for not helping the norn out more besides telling them to get away from Jormag and stop fighting him. This is usually, as the post above theorises, for a pretty good reason. (We also have evidence to suggest that the Gods, in fact, know more than Glint did).

It's pretty much a trope of incredibly powerful vaguely friendly beings to not help and provide all the answers.

And yes, I would say that the Gods realms are stabalising now, as evidenced by Nenah saying the Sanctum is getting better, and the Dhuum problem was always going to rear it's head again, that's been something that's been a threat since GW1, those that Grenth left in the Underworld still had the tools and plans to deal with the problem, including the sacrifice of the reapers, his own companions who helped him against Dhuum in the first place. I would hazard to guess that Melandru, Lyssa and Dwayna's realms are still fine and stable and were the entire time. The Dhuum problem was, as I said, an already existing issue and not something that came about because of the Gods departure, and the vulnerability of the Sanctum after Kormir's departure could be said to be a result of it being in the middle of the Realm of Torment still, and thus a holdover from Abaddon's fall.

To be honest, as we saw from the start of the living world story Episode 6, Kralkatorrik was -specifically- flying through the God's realms. He was looking for them, Aurene and the Commander even questioned what he was doing and where he was going.

So even if they had stayed in their realms they wouldn't have been able to avoid conflict with an Elder Dragon, which was their stated aim of leaving, not just withdrawing, so it stands to reason they theorised that it was possible an Elder Dragon could travel to the Mists to try and eat their magic, so they decided to leave their realms for now until that was no longer a possibility.

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That is a valid consideration - it seems that the gods didn't actually leave their realms until after Balthazar left the Mists, even if most of them left before they found out that it was Balthazar. It's possible that they had some advance warning that one of the Elder Dragons was going to get into the Mists and go after the god realms, and that's why they evacuated when they did.

Which may raise the possibility of them returning now that the Kralkatorrik situation has been resolved, although they might still be wary of Jormag and Stevebubbles.

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Yes, that's my thought. The timing just about adds up. They withdrew from the affairs of Tyria completely, and then only LATER, after Balthazar was stripped and imprisoned, did they actually leave their realms. The two are separate occurrences.

It's possible in my view that whilst they didn't want Balthazar to get out, they saw it as a possibility that he might, then go after Elder Dragons and either kill them or be killed himself and thus his power to mistwalk transferred to an Elder Dragon, who would then use it and quickly hunt them down in their realms for their magic. So they did the logical thing and withdrew even further.

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Something else that might fit the timing is that Glint's death might have been the trigger. Glint's army came from somewhere, after all - once Glint's spirit entered the Mists, the gods might have handed over responsibility for the defence of their former realms over to Glint. This still resulted in some chaos during the transition, naturally, but is different to out-and-out abandonment... and may have been the less bad option compared to the gods fighting it out with Kralkatorrik in the Mists.

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Possibly! Like I've been saying for years on these forums, I'm hoping ArenaNet are not going to go the route of "uncaring gods" because that runs counter to their previous lore more than anything, and I'm stubbornly clinging to the "we've not seen the last of the gods" comment.

It's not my fault they made one of the most absent parts of their lore amongst the most interesting.

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I don't get why people are confused about Balthazar and his motivations. He's the God of War. He is basically Ares. All you have to do is read some mythos to see what he's based upon and why he acts the way that he does.

In the GW2 multiverse, Dwayna is his antithesis.

Zeus even threatens Ares with the same fate in Iliad:Then looking at him darkly Zeus who gathers the clouds spoke to him:"Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympus.Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.And yet I will not long endure to see you in pain, sinceyou are my child, and it was to me that your mother bore you.But were you born of some other god and proved so ruinouslong since you would have been dropped beneath the gods of the bright sky."

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@Hannelore.8153 said:I don't get why people are confused about Balthazar and his motivations. He's the God of War. He is basically Ares. All you have to do is read some mythos to see what he's based upon and why he acts the way that he does.

In the GW2 multiverse, Dwayna is his antithesis.

His depiction in GW1 was probably closer to Athena than Ares. That's why gw1 vets dislike the change in personality. He went from a god of honorable combat and protector of the weak against malicious forces who had a bad temper, and was retconned into a brutal god of mindless slaughter and personal gain that was a spoiled manchild.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:I don't get why people are confused about Balthazar and his motivations. He's the God of War. He is basically Ares. All you have to do is read some mythos to see what he's based upon and why he acts the way that he does.

In the GW2 multiverse, Dwayna is his antithesis.

His depiction in GW1 was probably closer to Athena than Ares. That's why gw1 vets dislike the change in personality. He went from a god of honorable combat and protector of the weak against malicious forces who had a bad temper, and was retconned into a brutal god of mindless slaughter and personal gain that was a spoiled manchild.

SPOILERS FOR LS4:This is explained in lore, that Balthazar was always a lie, even in the days of GW1, it was just a religion as corrupt as any other. To understand this, read Zafira's commentary on the matter in the short stories that came before the release of War Eternal.

Yes, the developers decided to retcon it, However, it is their multiverse, and their lore, and their choice.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:I don't get why people are confused about Balthazar and his motivations. He's the God of War. He is basically Ares. All you have to do is read some mythos to see what he's based upon and why he acts the way that he does.

In the GW2 multiverse, Dwayna is his antithesis.

His depiction in GW1 was probably closer to Athena than Ares. That's why gw1 vets dislike the change in personality. He went from a god of honorable combat and protector of the weak against malicious forces who had a bad temper, and was retconned into a brutal god of mindless slaughter and personal gain that was a spoiled manchild.

SPOILERS FOR LS4:This is explained in lore, that Balthazar was always a lie, even in the days of GW1, it was just a religion as corrupt as any other. To understand this, read Zafira's commentary on the matter in the short stories that came before the release of War Eternal.

Yes, the developers decided to retcon it, However, it is their multiverse, and their lore, and their choice.

I have read Zafirah's, and Zafirah's commentary tells exactly the opposite of what you're saying about the religion being corrupt. Nor does it mention anything about the days of GW1.

In Zafirah's Requiem, she felt a presence of divinity. A presence that Aurene resembles, but Balthazar did not. This was not because it was all a lie, but because Balthazar was replaced as god of war and had fallen from grace.

The implication being that the Zaishen had not been praying to Balthazar, but his replacement, this entire time, and his replacement was closer to Balthazar's GW1 tenets and actions (as Aurene is) than Balthazar post-fall.

If anything, Zafirah's Requiem fixes and subverts the retcon to Balthazar a bit.

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@ThatOddOne.4387 said:Zafirah's story explains Balthazar's creed in a positive light, though.

His creed, not himself. The point is that the followers were blinded by the creed and couldn't see the real being until he literally walked around in front of them burning everything they love to the ground and not caring about anything.

The story in there & in War Eternal is that the creed is valuable and redeeming, but Balthazar himself was a lost cause.

The mistake that people make is thinking that he was ever any different when the only time we actually meet him in person is in LS3 and PoF. You can think all you want about any god, it doesn't mean it will be the reality if they ever visit your world.

Legend is just legend, and second-hand accounts are unreliable, perhaps even those of the other gods.

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@"Hannelore.8153" said:His creed, not himself. The point is that the followers were blinded by the creed and couldn't see the real being until he literally walked around in front of them burning everything they love to the ground and not caring about anything.

It's more than just his creed though:

Then I felt something. I didn't know what it was at first, but it felt strangely familiar to me. A power. A presence. Had I felt it before? Had it always been there?

But something was wrong. He stood before me, tall and imposing, power radiating from his physical form...but this power was different from what I had felt all those years before. His voice dissonant from the one I heard within me.

And as to the whole "couldn't see the real being until he literally walked around in front of them" is also incorrect. Balthazar had walked among mortals in the past. That was when his creed was written.

So Balthazar's creed was established when Balthazar walked among men, and Zafirah felt a presence after Balthazar had lost his divinity that mirrored that creed but did not match Balthazar himself.

The mistake that people make is thinking that he was ever any different when the only time we actually meet him in person is in LS3 and PoF. You can think all you want about any god, it doesn't mean it will be the reality if they ever visit your world.

The only time players meet him. But not the only time humans, be they living or dead had met him.

There is a mighty big difference. The creeds, the scriptures, and all the rest - those were first-hand accounts, written by those who met Balthazar personally, writing down Balthazar's words and actions. Not second-hand or made up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

this gives an interesting insight, so we have BalthazarGW1(replacement, honorable) and BalthazarGW2(OldDestructionManchild)when was balthazar replaced?if the zaishen of gw1 worshipped the replacement, did that mean balthazar was imprisoned before gw1 and kormir is only telling a secondhand story about how he was imprisoned?Seeing as how he entered tyria holding his fathers head, the one arriving was probably BalthazarGW2.

i would have to look through all the information, but some of you here may know some details from memory.

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You’ve got the timeline mixed up. Balthazar was imprisoned after the Gods withdrew after Kormirs ascension. So he’s been imprisoned and replaced from anywhere between 10 to 200 years.

The sequence of events is roughly as follows:

  • Kormir replaces Abaddon
  • The Gods limit contact with Tyria
  • The Gods decide to leave their realms in the Mists to avoid fighting the dragons.
  • Balthazar objects to this, is defeated and stripped of his power.
  • The Gods leave one by one, possibly including Balthazar’s replacement.
  • Kormir eventually leaves as well as seen in Path of Fire.

Given Gods are higher beings and probably operate on a different perspective of time, my personal assumption is that Balthazar has been imprisoned for the majority of the time since after the events of GW1 and the Gods left 1 by 1 over a period of 200-250 years up until Kormir also leaves, being the last to linger.

The crucial thing here is Balthazar’s replacement, because if he has been then the divine power that the Zaishen, Zafirah and even the human commander if they picked blessed by Balthazar feel is NOT Balthazar’s, but the new God of War, and that’s been the case for every human who thought they had been blessed by Balthazar for a couple of centuries.

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i know that last part is crucial, thats the whole point of thinking here, for how long have the zaishen been worshipping balthazar, dont the zaishen have that honor code since their beginning?, i dont know when the zaishen order was established, but its before nightfall for sure, as sousuke and jin in early nightfall are zaishen too.

are we sure balthazar's objection wasnt before abaddon's defeat?, reading this dialogue that kormir has in POF, it could very well mean this whole angry balthazar event happened between 0AE and 1070.is it possible maybe they imprisoned abaddon, years later they learn of the elder dragons and want to leave, but balthazar objects, but this time they have a replacement for balthazar, and actually know how to make that 'gift' they gave kormir to absorb the power, so they stripled balthazar and replaced him, and this new Balthazar2 is the one the zaishen refer to.and kormir is just telling a second hand story of balthazars angerpoint but wasnt actually there when it actually happened.hmm, the scriptures of balthazar look honorable and date from before abaddon's fall, but wasnt it mentioned somewhere that the shackles of abadon that balthazar made where painful, so the balthazar that created them was evil, so balthazar was replaced after the fall.

just trying to find some evidence for the idea that the balthazar we face in gw2 is not the same as the one from gw1 and that the gw1 balthazar was his honorable replacement and the one in gw2 was the original one

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@Amanda Whitemoon.6173 said:this gives an interesting insight, so we have BalthazarGW1(replacement, honorable) and BalthazarGW2(OldDestructionManchild)when was balthazar replaced?if the zaishen of gw1 worshipped the replacement, did that mean balthazar was imprisoned before gw1 and kormir is only telling a secondhand story about how he was imprisoned?Seeing as how he entered tyria holding his fathers head, the one arriving was probably BalthazarGW2.

i would have to look through all the information, but some of you here may know some details from memory.

BalthazarGW1 was still a good guy and embodied the better traits of the god of war. BalthazarGW2 fell from grace sometime after GW1 and was until HoT imprisoned in the Mists, striped of his divinity, and outright replaced by some unknown character that embodies the better traits of BalthazarGW1.

The devout like Zafirah or even a human PC who chose Balthazar as their patron god are praying and receiving divine aid/guidance from this unknown replacement. Unknowingly up until Balthazar's reveal and death, they continued to assume it was from Balthazar.

I imagine with the death of Balthazar getting around Tyria and the Zaishen and similar followers of the god of war still getting feedback from 'something', they'll realize someones still out there.

I'm kinda disappointed we didn't run into him/her or the other gods during our mist hoping shenanigans with Kralkatorrik. Though that's something we can probably look forward to in the upcoming living stories.

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What we need to keep in mind about the Zaishen Order is that in GW2 times it consists (or consisted) of more than just human worshipers of Balthazar. Prior to Scarlet's attack on Lion's Arch, we saw many nonhuman Zaishen training at Fort Marriner, but all the Zaishen disappeared from LA after the attack.

As per the info Ree Soesbee provided in a GuildMag interview: "The Zaishen still hold tournaments and serve to honor and protect the holy places, but now they honor more than Balthazar alone. They honor the Spirit of Bear, and the Eternal Alchemy's place in chaos and strife; they revere charr heroes as well as sylvari's dreams of chivalry and courage."

It sadly remains unknown whether nonhuman Zaishen still exist or if they were all wiped out in the Battle for Lion's Arch with only human members remaining. It would be interesting if the story ever touched on the fates of the nonhuman Zaishen and, if any of them survived, what they felt about their human comrades' decision to go fight for Balthazar rather than continue the duty of holding tournaments and protecting holy places.

As for Balthazar, narrative designer Connor Fallon has pointed out the following for the narrative team's reasons to write Balthazar the way they did in S3 and PoF: "I'll jump in for 2 about Balth, and point out that he entered the canon he was carrying his father's severed head. Humans viewed him as the god of honor, and in some ways his refusal to back away from confronting the dragons IS honorable... but he was always ruthless." So, as far as the current writers are concerned, the GW2 lore of Orr on Balthazar weighs more heavily than the GW1 lore about him. This answer doesn't make it completely clear, but does seem to suggest, that Balthazar may have been the cause of his father's death unless the ruthlessness is simply about carrying the severed head of your parent around. It would be interesting to learn more about Balthazar and Menzies's parents, why Balthazar ended up with his father's head and why he carried it so prominently when he first stepped into Tyria, and what originally caused the rivalry between him and Menzies.

Likewise, we know from historical records that Balthazar slew the old ritualist Kaolai, who had bested him in a game of Nui, in a fit of anger, and it was specifically mentioned that Balthazar inducting Kaolai into Tahnakai Temple was "a rare gesture of sportsmanship" from him. This doesn't mean that Balthazar didn't have some good behavior from time to time, as at least his follower Queen Yasamin's ghost was quick to point out in Siren's Landing: "He came to visit his reliquary, and I was the first to greet him. He was gracious and asked me to maintain the reliquary, but when he left, it went still." In this moment Balthazar really didn't need to be gracious; he may have been demanding of the queen and the other ghosts, and yet he chose to act respectfully towards her. It makes me wish we'd seen more of this nicer side of Balthazar beyond his Lazarus act, Aurene not reacting in a hostile manner to him at first when he saved her from Destroyers (so she must have sensed his true self beyond the mursaat disguise), his initial interactions with Marjory and Yasamin, and him choosing to spare Rytlock out of gratitude for freeing him in the first PoF encounter.

It would've helped if Forged had continued to be a presence in Season 4 to shed some light on Balthazar's personality, their reactions to him returning a changed man, whether the Eternals were already following a new deity of conflict at this point but may have been disillusioned due to gods abandoning them and welcoming back their old master, and why Balthazar felt compelled to brainwash even his loyal Eternals to follow through with his campaign. The Forged's lack of appearance throughout the season was rather puzzling to me; even with the explanation given about the Awakened defeating them, I can't imagine war veterans with millennia of combat experience against the Shadow Army and other threats being fully bested by relatively newbie-ish Awakened, especially when the hinted-at General of the Burning Forest from Devona/Herald's writings never made an appearance in game so it seems there may have originally been plans to expand the General's role and perhaps have him either appear on PoF maps or set him up as the leader of the Forged after Balthazar's demise.

I still hold out hope, as unlikely as it is at this point, that we may yet meet some surviving Eternals and Forged one day to explore the aforementioned matters more, perhaps if they ever follow through with Linsey Murdock's suggestions that there's more to Balthazar and the state of god of war than we've seen; a good way to explore this would be to introduce us to Balthazar's successor (as the gods should have stored that divinity somewhere as per lore with Abaddon and Dhuum lest it wreak havoc on the Mists even though Jessica Price's tweets about original S4 drafts mentioned that upon ascension Aurene would've uttered the phrase "I'm the new god of war" to truly balance magic so apparently Balthazar's divinity was just out there for the grabs in initial plans somehow). Perhaps the mention of Zafirah sensing a noble presence which differed from the moment she met with Balthazar suggests the existence of the new deity of conflict; if only the developers weren't worried about stepping on players' toes, lorewise the best candidate for godhood, IMHO, would be the GW1 hero to explain their absence from Tyria in its times of crisis, why they never became Vlast's champion, why they didn't continue diplomacy with charr after the success with Pyre's warband, why they didn't stop the centaur threat from spreading in Kryta, why they didn't assist Koss and Lonai in the assault on Joko and prevent Elona's fall into darkness and the massacre of Zhed's pride of centaurs, or why they didn't prevent Cantha from falling into the hands of the Ministry of Purity since Reiko's death. The game could even depict this hero-god with divine armor that obscures their features and sex and give them the Exalted Luminate's "dual voice" so it's unclear if the god in question is a he or she; they'd just need to find a good monicker for this new deity of conflict that they'd be using since their ascension to godhood. :)

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I do feel the only real candidate that you can draw from old lore for the replacement God of War is the GW1 hero OR Rurik, and the latter only because he embodies the honourable and heroic ideals to a T, including up and dying to buy time for his people to escape, and realising that a war was lost and electing to retreat to save lives rather than fight on to a needless and bloody end - Which would also line up nicely for him to agree with the Gods withdrawing to avoid conflict with the Elder Dragons.

If it was the GW1 hero, well, fully encasing armour with the male/female merged voice will be suitably out there, I feel, "Protector God", "God of Heroes", "The Nameless God", etcetc.

But yes, ArenaNet's characterisation of Balthazar was... Iffy. They didn't need to go out of their way to say "Look guys Balthazar is ruthless" because their original lore already HAD that.

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