Revenant Lore

[Jayhalden.4183]

Okay, okay. You know what you signed up for reading that title. Revenants.

Everyone's favorite class to RP because they totally make sense from a Lore standpoint. They are a great class and one of (at least in my opinion) if not the best class for flavor dealing with the inner most beings. They manipulate the Mists into their magic to call upon great Legends. The Commander can be one to channel great beings like Glint, or Mallyx!

You know this though if you're reading this. But while we can pull some info from the wiki and the game skills there are some grey areas which I'd love to go over!
1) Revenants can channel Legends, what are the limits to these Legends and what constitutes a Legend? Could a Norn Channel someone like Jora? Do these Legends have to be known to the person? Like what if the Skritt have a Legendary figure in their History? Could a Rev channel that Skritt despite never hearing about them?
 

2) How does the Legend interact with Tyria? Do they see through the eyes of the Revenant, or are they around the person like an invisible Spirit? If they do see through the eyes of the Revenant what if the Revenant is wearing a blindfold.. can the Legend still see?

 

3) Can the same Legend be channeled by multiple Revenants? If so, are each of those Channels Separate instances essentially of the Legend, or would two Revenants be able to talk over long distances because they are Channeling the same Legend?
 

4) How do the Mist steps work? The Revenant is a Tap to the Mists, does this mean they are entering the Mists and exiting in rapid succession? Does this mean that the Revenants can access the connection with the Mists in that area and see what is around them such as large events that might have happened sort of like seeing fractals?
 

5) One can learn how to become a Revenant from being taught, but are there other ways to become a Revenant? Rytlock was the first, but in order for others to spring up it means he would have had to have taught others yet like Gorea Halfcut. She escaped because her warband failed. Did Rytlock teach her?

How do you play a Revenant? Does it differ from this? Can we consolidate our resources so that Revenants can be understood greater as one Revenant to another?

[KnightEd.4965]

You've asked the right forum- I'm your resident one-stop shop to Revenant lore and headcanons. Keep in mind that everything I say on this thread is going to be a mix of observations from in-game, the wiki, Guild Wars 1, and my own personal headcanons based on all of those above things. And while I consider myself sort-of knowledgable, I am not the be-all end-all for lore, so what I say could either be proven wrong by the real writers of Guild Wars 2. So without further interruption, let's get into it:
 

Quote

1) Revenants can channel Legends, what are the limits to these Legends and what constitutes a Legend? Could a Norn Channel someone like Jora? Do these Legends have to be known to the person? Like what if the Skritt have a Legendary figure in their History? Could a Rev channel that Skritt despite never hearing about them?

So a very common headcanon between a lot of people based on an old lore post from a while back is that you're channeling an Echo, which is essentially a snapshot of that person that was imprinted across the Mists due to how much of an impact they had on a world. This means that basically anyone can be considered a Legend so long as they had an impact on the world at large. You could've created a race of people, lead a revolution, destroyed a country, ruled as a king, been a very influential chef - anything. So long as they were very important in the scheme of the world, they could've imprinted on the Mists and left an Echo for Revenants to channel.

Quote

2) How does the Legend interact with Tyria? Do they see through the eyes of the Revenant, or are they around the person like an invisible Spirit? If they do see through the eyes of the Revenant what if the Revenant is wearing a blindfold.. can the Legend still see?

The Legend is, presumably, around the person like an invisible spirit, able to see things but not interact with the world otherwise. They're essentially an invisible observer that only you can hear. A very common headcanon is that when a Revenant is wearing a blindfold, they're borrowing the ability to see from the legend in the way you might borrow Shiro's skill or Ventari's benevolence, for the sake of training.

Quote

3) Can the same Legend be channeled by multiple Revenants? If so, are each of those Channels Separate instances essentially of the Legend, or would two Revenants be able to talk over long distances because they are Channeling the same Legend?

Yes, which lends more credibility to the idea of it being an Echo and not the literal person. Multiple Revenants exist in-lore and it would thus make more sense if you were communing with the legend of the person and not the literal person themselves.

Quote

4) How do the Mist steps work? The Revenant is a Tap to the Mists, does this mean they are entering the Mists and exiting in rapid succession? Does this mean that the Revenants can access the connection with the Mists in that area and see what is around them such as large events that might have happened sort of like seeing fractals?

Yes to the Mist Step part. It's heavily implied that skills like Sword 3 have the Revenant enter the Mists and then exit them at another location. The second part is up for debate, because the Mists aren't necessarily just a 1:1 recreation of Tyria- it's a massive proto-reality containing tons of different realms and Tyrias. That being said, a Revenant could probably have an easier time locating fractals for the sake of revisiting historical events.

Quote

5) One can learn how to become a Revenant from being taught, but are there other ways to become a Revenant? Rytlock was the first, but in order for others to spring up it means he would have had to have taught others yet like Gorea Halfcut. She escaped because her warband failed. Did Rytlock teach her?

It's stated that Rytlock ended up training a bunch of other Revenants when he left the Mists, so the people he originally trained could've then trained other people, and then those people could've trained others, and then the list goes on. So while you could've been taught by Rytlock, you could've also been taught by one of Rytlock's students, or that student's student. 
However, while he's the first we've ever seen, it stands to reason that you could become a Revenant without a formal education by traveling the Mists and finding these Echoes yourself. Think of it like becoming a Ranger by traveling the wilderness, or becoming an Elementalist by living on the water or near a volcano.
And if you really want to claim that they've been at this for a while, you can claim they've been practicing Ritualist stuff all of this time and transitioned over to Revenant when it became more popular. Ritualist lorewise is a predecessor to Revenant, and while it's very different in function and purpose they still have a lot in common if you want to research it.

Quote

How do you play a Revenant?

All in all, Revenants are just a magic profession that happens to channel the Mists. It's ultimately up to you how you want to use them, but in practice they're a heavily armored magic practitioner that channels the legends of dead people.
If you'd like my full thoughts, I've got a big document I made a while back here. [Ed's Revenant Google Doc]

[SimpleCrow.5309]

On 4/30/2021 at 8:29 PM, KnightEd.4965 said:

Yes to the Mist Step part. It's heavily implied that skills like Sword 3 have the Revenant enter the Mists and then exit them at another location. The second part is up for debate, because the Mists aren't necessarily just a 1:1 recreation of Tyria- it's a massive proto-reality containing tons of different realms and Tyrias. That being said, a Revenant could probably have an easier time locating fractals for the sake of revisiting historical events.

 

Worth noting, in other Lore Interviews, the Mists are described as multi-layered, which means it makes sense that Revenants would be able to use their magic to slip into the shallowest layer of the Mists. 

Best comparison I can think of is the Ethereal Plane from D&D. It's just kind of there, just beneath the surface, but unlike the Eternal Battlegrounds, the Borderlands, the Edge of the Mist, and the PvP Hub, it isn't quite a solid place with lots of islands and structure. It's just the shallows, skimming under the surface of the Mists to quickly return to Tyria.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

[This message is unwelcomed and was removed.]

Edited September 30, 2021 by Dean Calaway.9718

[Gibson.4036]

Can you point me to where it is talked about Rytlock teaching other Revs?

Also, as a class that leaps through portals to attack, shoots arrows through portals, was founded by a Charr who leapt into a portal and reappeared back through one, why doesn’t Rev have a portal utility like Mesmer and Thief?