Nightbringer Tenchi.5794

It's an NCSoft shareholder interview, NCSoft owns other Fantasy MMO ips. Do ya'll remember Aion? Aion 2 has been confirmed in development. Some of you might know about Blade & Soul, Blade & Soul 2 came out in 2021 and there's 2 more Blade & Soul games confirmed. So I find these rumors of Guild Wars 3 being confirmed in development to be highly dubious when there's enough info to create substantial doubt about the claim.

So my first time through End of Dragons I had vague idea of what would probably happen. And after the first act of the campaign 1 character had most of my attention, Joon. Her introduction in the imperial court and her political joisting match set the scene as Minister Li is the boomer curmudgeon resisting the advancement and Joon as an upstart due to being the Empress' sister and the one who modernized Cantha with jade tech. A real career politician v CEO scene. A little on the nose but I can dig it, subtlety isn't always necessary. But something about Joon just didn't sit right with me, it's not like there is anything you can investigate off a single brief meeting but Joon just gave me a bad vibe. And this sense of unease grew in act 2 when Joon began to act in a "Welcome to My city" kind of way as I began to explore New Kaineng. The city feels dystopian and oppressive. The wealthy and important sit in lavish buildings on the highwall and everyone else has to manage at ground and water level. There's even a district that still uses steam power instead of updating to the jade tech, with the Steam creature storyline basically dead I had a bit of hope this would go somewhere in the future(can't say I still have that hope), but I pressed on. And it was in the final part of chapter 2, Deepest Secrets, that Joon really took hold of the story for me. Going through the powerplant Joon was more than welcoming, but when the tour began to go haywire my alarm bells started to go off. A place this advanced, with this much security and protections in place, located at the literal bottom of the ocean, this had to be an inside job for the Aetherblades and Joon has already worked with them before, or at least with Mai Trin. Working my way through the facility Ankka is worked up to be absolute unhinged lunatic and when she kills off Mai Trin(in a cutscene of all things) it was a heartbreak moment for the story for me. Mai Trin was on a great redemption arc and it would have been incredible to see her and Rama join what ever Dragon's Watch becomes. But now that she's dead she's probably going to be relegated to a Revenant elite spec so just gotta live with that loss and hate Ankka harder. By the time I was done with the mission I had a few conclusions; Ankka had to have been working with Joon. Joon had to have known about the Dragon Void and security coming to arrest my part was part coverup and part political powerplay. The sent of deceit was wafting hot and heavy from this, and with how in favor of modernization Joon is with probably more than just Minister Li standing in her way, this began to look to me like a hostile takeover of a political stage. "The empress let in these foreigners and now look at the mess they caused, this never would have happened under the late emperor" kind of thing. Fomenting a schism between Shing Jae and mainland Cantha. At the start of act 3 the attempted arrest I was certain there was something crazy going on with Joon and at the end of act 3 in the mission Empty my suspicions were confirmed as Ankka spoke the biggest broken promise of the entire campaign; "You, the Inquest, Joon. Why's everyone want to play god?" That like was like a ludic thought in the middle of an unhinged rant. Ankka related Joon to the player and the Inquest. Now I'm in the camp of "Joko was correct about the player character" with his last rant in Long Live the Lich, and the idea that Joon is a villain was driven in even more in act 4 when Minister Li turns out to be a Purist leader. If she's got enough skill and ability to turn Kaineng from a condensed mess of buildings made from what ever was on hand at the time to a dystopian metropolises that actually rivals Tyria's 5 great cities in magnitude then she could very well be manipulating the Aetherblades, Purists, Speakers, Jade Brotherhood and who knows what else. She might have a stockpile of unchained Risen that she can throw into populated zones just to cause chaos if need be. And with the Aetherblades being able to warp through the mists, Joon could even have quietly set up a stronghold somewhere in central Tyria, near anythin is possible if she's the sane evil genius type. And so I get to Joon's mansion. Joon likes to show off for guests, kinda classic in the evil genius archetype. Work my way through her house, meet the Gokushufudou and think "this could work in favor of the story later" than keep going. Face off against Joon, break her toys, and I'm ready to be denied this confrontation as she does the villainous secret escape route trick. But that's not what happens. No one: Literally no one: Not a single character throughout the story: Joon: "I wONT AppoLOGise FOR being EXcePtIONal!" Me: "....What?" All that build up and when finally when confronted she acts like an abused child. At no point in the story does literally ANYTHING hint to this weepy complex she has about her own success. I've not come across a single line of dialog that would have ever hinted at this is who she really is, even if that dialog would have been appropriate since success breeds jealousy. And it's made worse by how Taimi, the child of the group has to placate her feelings. Joon is supposed to be this powerful CEO and revolutionary inventor and here she is throwing a tantrum like a 14 year old over something that, if it was even said at all, the player never hears. And for the rest of the story her character takes this depressed, defeated tone. It's like that one moment of confrontation literally killed off the character she was up until that point. And everything I thought was going on was just my own wishful thinking. Joon wasn't involved in the reactor incident, she wasn't manipulating the purists, there was no back room lobbying or political subterfuge, I'm not even sure why Joon was so insistent on modernizing Shing Jae in the first place. Living World Season 6 could have been something incredible. It could have been Joon building up a paramilitary army of multiple different factions as she launches a literal hostile take over of Cantha with an assault on Shing jae. She could have tried to usurp the imperial system and establish herself as the new ruler in an autocratic technocracy. Her house husband could even have been one of those questionable characters that could have been trying to convince everyone that Joon really does mean well even if her methods aren't completely agreeable. I played through the story 2 more times and even with hindsight and knowledge of the plot it's always the same. Joon's mansion kills her character and changes how the story could have ended. Joon could have been a great character, a compelling BBEG and a story driver for at least 1 full season of Living World content. But that character was erased in a single line of dialog.

We all know the story of Balthazar, the "god of war" by human standards. But the subtext behind his story tells a very different tale. One of power struggle between the rightful heir to the throne of the Fissure of Woe and of a Usurper that stole it from him. Bathazar and Menzies are half-brothers. Honestly, I'm not certain how we actually know this as to my knowledge there are no written citations to where this info came from so my assumption is it's NPC chatter from a Domain of Anguish mission in Guild Wars 1, but moving forward under that assumption we can be certain of 2 things about the "human gods"; Firstly, they can procreate and Secondly, that procreation isn't limited by race unless the "human gods" themselves are also racially human as we see with Dwayna and Grenth being mother and son while Grenth's father being an unnamed Orrian, a human. Grenth is proof of racial hybridization since he is, by nature, half-god. From this we can extract that the Father of war procreated with 2 different races, what ever they may be and I have a bit of an educated guess on this, to create both Balthazar and Menzies. And here's where the struggle comes in. "Balthazar came in fire and wrath, carrying the head of his father and leading his fierce hounds, Temar and Tegon. He swept Orr with a cleansing flame. It was he who claimed Tyria for humanity; he who said the other races would be easy to defeat. It would not be the only time that the Master of War was wrong." — Orrian History Scrolls, The Six, Volume 2—Balthazar: God of War [Balthazar came in fire and wrath, carrying the head of his father]. This very statement is loaded with a power struggle between father and son, ending in the son's victory, carrying the head like a trophy and that it was a conflict born of a very bitter disagreement, enough to inspire "wrath". Not pride, not victory, not courage or anything else you would expect from a venerable warrior. Wrath, deliberate scornfulness. So what conflict could Balthazar have with his father? Simple; the Father of war was going to name Menzies his successor and Balthazar couldn't accept it. We know from both the death of Abaddon, the imprisonment of Dhuum and the death of Balthazar that god's power doesn't just vanish when they die, it can be stolen from them. This is further proven by the Margonite known as "The Apostate" as the reward dialog in the quest "The Apostate" reads as fallows; "Thank you for protecting me. And for your help, I shall now fulfill my end of the bargain. You may have wondered why I was being chased so vehemently by Abaddon's hunters, and I believe it is as simple as this: I do not believe Abaddon to be an eternal god. There were other gods before him, before he was imprisoned here. And I believe that while the power he uses cannot be destroyed, he may be supplanted, as he supplanted his predecessor. Use this knowledge for your benefit." From this we can infer that this 'supplanting' behavior is well known amongst the gods themselves. When you have power and you know it can be stolen from you, you'd need to take as many precautions as necessary to prevent that from happening. Doesn't always work but the gods even sometimes plan for when their assassin chooses to dance in front of them. And as we've seen with the death of Balthazar, a god's loose power doesn't need to go all to the same place as Balthazar's power ended up split between Kralkatorrik and Aurene. This is where the father's head and wrath come in. My conclusion is that durring the struggle between the Father of war and Balthazar, Menzies at some point was present and fought with their father against Balthazar. But Balthazar gained the upper hand and either kill the father with a beheading strike or killed him then beheaded him. Either way there was enough time for Balthazar to collect the head before arriving in Orr. The reason Bathazar arrived in 'fire and wrath' is because he was furious that he didn't take 100% of the father's power and it was split between the brothers instead. Now one more thing to establish is my belief on the nature of Balthazar and Menzies before getting into the real meat of "where is he now?" and that thing is how both Balthazar and Menzies are half god's of war. Given their father was the original(to our knowledge) god of war and being half brothers sharing the same father; they would both be half-war god so to speak. But what is the other half? We see all kinds of art and eventually the actual physical embodiment of Balthazar himself and... to be honest... he looks a lot like a Norn. If the human goddess Dwayna can birth a son by a human of Orr, then there's no evidence that another god can't procreate with another race. And it's not just his look that makes me think Norn, Balthazar acted a LOT like the Norn from Guild Wars 1 in my opinion. He could be half something else entirely, but until we are told of something else that fits the bill this is what my logic has brought me to. And that brings me to Menzies, what if Menzies was half Charr? A human loving half-norn half-war god would have every reason to be irate with a father who names a half-charr half-war god his heir instead of himself. The charr are a very warring race to begin with and the spiked aesthetic of the shadow army are shared with Charr wargear. Just a possibility and can very well not be true to the story but until we know more about the two god's parents or the actual look of menzies himself, as he has absolutely zero associated are or imagery in both Guild Wars 1 & 2 we can only speculate on the nature of their feud. To that effect, I conclude that this usurping of his rightful title as the God of War by Balthazar is not only the reason why Menzies laid constant siege to the Fissue of Woe but why he seems to have no interest in the material plane of Tyria. Abaddon's Margonites, Titans and Torment demons have all been seen in Tyria(and 1 in Cantha), creatures of the Underworld inhabit places with links to it like in Godslost Swamp in Queensdale and Reaper's Gate in Lornar's Pass. But the Shadow army of Menzies has only been seen in 3 places; The Fissure of Woe, The Realm of Torment and technically the Hall of Heroes. Though the "Darkness" boss in the Hall of Heroes is labeled as a "Torment Demon" making it one of Abaddon's minions, the "Darkness" enemies in the Domain of Anguish are all classified under Shadow Army. Brings up the question "Is this an error or is this intentional?" which in turn has even greater implications but that's off topic. So that leaves the big question; Where is Menzies now and what is he doing? My guess is that he is consolidating his power before a big reveal and the rightful god of war, whether or not he will strictly be a human god is anyone's guess but as of right now, with Balthazar and Abaddon dead and Dhuum in lockup, Menzies has literal free reign of the Fissure of Woe, Realm of Torment and possibly parts of the Underworld. We know from the Nightfall campaign that Menzies was cooperating with both Abaddon and Dhuum and now with his 2 allies gone and his great enemy in Balthazar dead, the only thing standing in his way is the limit of his own power. We know this with the Dragonfall map, it's swarming with Shadow army which tells us that not only is Menzies still very much so alive and well but his army's numbers are growing. And the only 2 mentions of Menzies in all of Guild Wars 2 is the torch Fate of Menzies and the Greatsword Menzies' Anguish. Neither of which currently seem to mean anything to Menzies' story and we don't know if they ever will. Whether or not Menzies is a good or evil god is largely a subjective position, especially since the only "evil" thing he's really done is fight Balthazar and collaborate with other "fallen gods". But we've found out that Balthazar himself wasn't exactly a good god to begin with and in story is considered one of the "fallen gods" now. But it still remains that Menzies may in the future reveal himself as the "new" god of war and if Arenanet wants to incorporate both the Fissure of Woe and Realm of Torment into future content they will be forced to expand upon this character to do so. All that said, I think it would be very interesting and have great story implications if Menzies did turn out to be something like half-Charr, especially with how the Charr view gods, could end up with the revival of the Gold Legion. But those are just my thoughts.