Guild Wars 2 - Balthazar Lore Crash Course | All The Important Bits! 

Hope you guys have fun today! Slight change of plan before we get to talking about Draconis mons and the druids, etc, and that's to run over some of this stuff! Sorry if I spoke a bit ... fast. Kinda notice that about myself when it comes to these topics.

I think that Balthazar and his hounds appear in GW2 as how Tyrians depict them is because he's in Tyria. Maybe, if Balthazar travels to Cantha or Elona, his appearance will shift to match the respective location. Maybe, just maybe. I also think that the hounds that humans can summon are just fire elementals shaped after the hounds of Balthazar.

Anyone claiming the six are not "real gods" are thinking too much in terms of the concept of God as exists in Abrahamic religions. The Tyrian gods are more ancient Greek and Roman gods. Who had parents, could be slain and were not omnipotent or the creators of "all there is". They created some stuff but it was largely understood that they were just really really powerful beings who did not have to obey the laws of nature and were forces of nature themselves.

i feel like all the corpse jumping, rage whispering, spawn camping, gank squadding thieves in wvw have inherited some of balthys personality

Just wait next episode when Lyssa appear wanting her mirror back and find out Balthazar broke it. Just in the next episode of super famous netlix series: The Six! xD

Maybe balthazars presence on tyria is that similar to when shiro and the envoy appeared in their misty form. Rytlock may have more than a clue with why balthazar is on tyria right now, from his time in the mists.

I just watched an ad for a terrible song for over 2 minutes, just for you WP. Thanks for another great video!

learning just HOW fallible and human balthasar really is i gotta wonder if he is actually the least godlike of all the six. grenth for example with his theme of justice seems to make a god way more worthy of worship in my head.

Also, a little cool connection, both King Adelbern and Balthazar were warriors that used fire magic, both showed excellence in combat, and became war leaders, both made mistakes and were at times a bit foolhardy and both had family problems. I've always been a fan of Ascalon Lore as well as Lore on Balthazar, thanks for the video. :)

"It's not Lazarus the Dire, it's Balthazar... the Balthazar" x'D

Even though Grenth and Korimir were confirmed to be human once, I don't belive Balthazar is, due to his apathy toward Tyria as a planet

Why is Balthazar's temple in the Straits of Devastation called the Altar of Betrayal? Foreshadowing?

The sword Balthazar uses to down you and Taimi is going to be the gen 2 legendary greatsword. I'm calling it here.

I think we know how the war in the Fissure of Woe ended. "The Fate of Menzies" is an exotic torch: it's a decapitated head, with horns, shoved on top of a stick. :) edit:Don't write comments in the middle of the night, on a phone. You'll just realize you spell/form sentences like an idiot when you wake up.

Hey WP, this video is absolutely fantastic! I always love hearing more about the deeper lore of the Guild Wars Universe, and your excitement to share it is extremely contagious. I would very much like to see you do more in-depth lore videos on the Human Gods as well as perhaps deity's from the other races in the Universe. Thanks again for the awesome content, my dude!

About the Six Gods, there's a great library called Hidden Arcana in Durmand Priory that you can get access if you follow Living World Season 2 5. Echoes of the Past. There's a ton of information there regarding lore. One of my favorites is a book that's on the 2nd floor called: "The Six: Being or Playing God". It has the following input: "More editorial than actual historical work, this book by Xakk published in 1326 A.E., deconstructs the nature of the gods worshipped by humans. It is coincidence that they have been gone since the first dragon began to stir. I think not. While they may not be gods, they are certainly not fools. The dragons would covet magic such as theirs. These beings are benefactors--often reluctant, sometimes misguided, and occasionally vindictive. To say that they created our world is ridiculous. Did they bring humans to Tyria? I cannot argue against this. It is an ancient belief that has no proof to support or deny it. Perhaps humans are constructs created from clay and bone. Perhaps they were brought here from somewhere else in the Mists or some other realm within the Eternal Alchemy. I think either of these is plausible, given the power wielded by these beings. But, are they gods? I say no. They are what we would all become if given the amount of magical energy they possess and allowed to live as long as they appear to have."

Wow, that Kaolai sure seems like a protective guy.

About the "why the mercenaries" thing... I think its pretty obvious why Balthazar chose to hire them instead of bringing his own devoted followers or whatever. Until we shatter his illusion there was no reason for him to fight us with something that would give his true identity away. So he went in there with mercenaries to hide the fact that he is Balthazar, not knowing that we have a plan to destroy his illusion. It might be possible that now we know who the real Lazarus is, Balthazar will show up with more fitting goonies.

The Six bless you, WP! (if that's still appropriate now) Some of my faith in the GW writing has been restored :D

I bet the reason that the Tyrian interpretation of Balthazar is so right it's because he actually lived there.

WoodenPotatoes, have you considered that he might appear as the Tyrian interpretation of him, because all Tyrian idols (as far as I know) stem from Orr, where the Gods used to live. Wouldn't it be safe to say, those idols are bound to be true interpretation, because they were made when the gods still lived in Orr. And all other idols from other locations are warped due to culture and changes over the years?

That's what I want to see. A lot of speculation and analysis content. Thanks WP! Keep them coming.

I like this a lot as a role-player (and a game master). I've always done multiple forms of deities in my campaigns. Some really are merely powerful entities and others are more vague ideas or aspects of the universe. I think the human gods in Guild Wars are really well suited to be powerful entities. They are legendary creatures. They are still worshiped and feared but their presence is just more tangible.

I've developed my own hypothesis, that maybe the Pale Tree is actually Melandru. Sounds crazy I know, but think about it: maybe that is why the Sylvari were able to resist Mordremoth AT ALL, since it did say in the Sylvari storyline that the pale tree was PROTECTING the Sylvari from Mordremoth's reach. It also explains why Caldebolg would be able to have such purity and cleanse (since it would be using her godlike magic), and why the Pale tree has a mind of it's own at all as oppose to the corpse grove and other blighting trees belonging to Mordremoth.

I know it would've required more asset development on their part, but it would've been cool if Balthazar and the hounds appeared differently to humans who said they were from Elona or Cantha in the story. Just a thought.

Balthazar is a gem. Really interested in him while playing bg3. So well written.

I think of the six as similar in nature to Greek or Norse gods/goddesses, rather than omnipotent, all powerful beings that we usually associate with godhood. In Greek mythology it was common for gods to be fallible. For example there were a ton of problems caused because Zeus (the freaking leader of the gods) couldn't keep it in his pants.

I don't have time to play GW2 anymore, but I love this lore and your videos! Well done WP.

what if the reason he looks exactly like tyrians expected is because he 'changes' his form based on where he is so that he is to be recognized without any doubt. so he'd look different if he were to appear in Elona or Cantha? a bit like how roman and Greek gods where they same, yet different in each culture?

kinda dissapointed that my HUMAN charecter was so eager to kill balthyzu while kas had the 'correct' reaction.

Did anyone notice, that Balthazar has 3 hounds with him? The statue in the wiki shows 3 and as does the statue in Divinity's Reach I guess. Where is the third one? :D

I can't help but feel Melandru might be a bit annoyed he went rampaging through a druid safe haven. But the return of the gods at least explains why we're going to the desert, ascension.

In regards to the similar-but-different interpretations of the Gods depending on what continent we're in - I subscribe to the idea that the Gods, knowing they were significantly more powerful than those they ruled over, may have been SLIGHTLY vain. Because of this, I reckon they had paintings of THEMSELVES...in Orr, and wherever they claimed as theirs. I think this is why the human interpretations of Balthazar is almost visually identical to actual Balthazar. The art of the Gods has been passed down.

The way he appears to people may change if he wants to. Since he's appearing in Tyria he decided to show up as the Tyrian version of him. Or maybe different people see him in different ways, none of the characters described him. It would be cool to see Marjory saying that the Balthazar she saw was different from the one seen by the others.

Consider this, Balthazar being the god of "fire and war" could be translated to "intellect and peace". For the Fire part just look up Prometheus. War can be translated to the basic needs and how one is willing to fight for those needs.

I always thought menzies was a creation of balthazar. I assumed he brought life to his shadow to create a foe that he could battle against for all eternity, because he loved it so much.

Woohoo! Balthazar video!

Seems kinda like Greek mythology - The gods stayed up on thier mountain/domain but would sometimes come down to earth. As for the Wolves of War; they might not be stuck to 1 form. They may be the dogs, as well as the drakes, as well as the lions.

charr: (derisively) "The humans worship Balthazar like a god." charr: "Well then; one of us will get to bear the title of Godslayer." ~ overheard in the Black Citadel

I fully suspect Balth lost the battle against Menzies. Maybe he asked the others for help and they turned him down, or did something to specifically lose their favor. I mean, we don't have nearly enough details now, but that's my current guess. I'd love to see some return to the FoW. My hope is that's it not a raid; it'd be a shame to see something so important to the lore have a focus on combat rather than getting to explore all the nooks, crannies, and secrets that we might get to see. We shall see...!

Hey WP Me and my friends recently got into GW2 and was wondering what to start doing once we're level 80 as there isn't very many clear cut updated guides on the subject. We've has bucket loads of fun leveling, we just don't know exactly what to do next. Really enjoying the videos!

FoW was a nightmare, I did a few runs as a 55 monk and it was hellish trying to deal with all those hexes and spell breakers. Even with a full crew, still a rough time, the loot was amazing though. Still remember killing the old god of death, that was some sick shit right there.

I like the idea that the twin swords Magdear and Sohothin were forged by smiths of the eternals in the temple of war (the very center of FoW as I remember). Both swords are fiery, they originated from Orr likely from the time the Gods walked Tyria. I remembered that ascalonian humans revered Balthazar as they marched their conquest torwards charr domain. The swords could likely have been given to the first heir / king of the ascalonian crusade, by the eternals or Balthazar himself. Foefire resembles somewhat like the eternals; they're ethereals cought in a loop of strife. Another thing I'd like to point out is that Rytlock still hasn't mentioned what happend in the mist, what if the sword guided him through the conflicts revolving around FoW. What if he participated, died and came back as the revenant we know.

Whenever WP mentions Balthazar i can't help but think about the Azurik LP. Fun times

@22:20 I had always assumed that the idol found by the Honorless Gladium was the same one that was later used in the Durmand Priory step. There was no mention of it being used by the Separatists, after all.

@WoodenPotatoes regarding Balth's look: couldn't he choose to appear in whatever way would be most effective to those who look upon him? I realize that he had to use a mirror to change appearance, but perhaps he's limited to taking human form, and can only change the way his armor and hounds appear depending on who's looking?

WP, how do you feel about doing videos on *all* of the human gods and speculate on how they might relate to the seemingly shifted focus of the story? For instance, will Lyssa be upset about the mirror, and will she be the one who curbstomps Balthy? Will Grenth step in somehow with his Reapers to aid us (my thought is that Grenth and Balthazar seem like polar opposites so maybe there's a rivalry there to settle.) Could Kormir come in again, perhaps as a voice of reason?

Maybe this was answered in the current patch, but maybe the going blind thing was something the gods told humans to basically Not bug them all the time and wasn't actually true.

at the end of gw1 the player could get a hound of balthazar as a pet for the zhaishen menagerie... but that isn't really something we can learn about there via lore.

God. news like this makes me regret that I stoped playing gw2 a couple years ago. I fucking loved the more in gw1 and hearing that one of the gods is now walking around in gw2 brings back memories

It's probably Lyssa pretending to be Balthazar pretending to be Lazarus. That'd be an illusion worthy of the goddess of Mesmers, yes? It would explain why they're mercenaries he summons and not the Zaishen.

Huh guess we can infer that the gift ArenaNet sent you, the glass Eternity sword, was a hint about Balthazar. I only came to that conclusion since the Scriptures of Balthazar mentioned "eternity" and "grand sword that did glow with such brilliance." Sounds pretty much like Eternity to me. That's pretty neat, though I might be entirely wrong.

*opens video, having not played episode 5, and being curious about Balthazar* *is told Lazarus is Balthazar* welp.

My personal head-canon is that the appearance of the gods is in the eye of the beholder. After all, it would make sense that for the player characters of GW2, regardless of race, their main cultural touchstone for what the human gods look like would be the way they are depicted by the Tyrians, thus the gods appear exactly the way you expect them. Perhaps a human born and raised in Elona would have seen lions instead of hounds. And Balthazar himself would have looked Elonan.

Balthazar brought mercenaries with him because he didn't plan on blowing his cover.

I spent some time today checking through the wiki, and reading up on the various GW1 Manuscripts. it strikes me that the depictions of the gods in the murals in Ascalon, Gandara, and all of their statues were remarkably consistent. The only real difference is in the text of the Factions manuscripts (all Canthan statues looked identical to those in the rest of the world) that have some very minor differences. It seems to me that we always have known what the gods looked like and Canthans, as the furthest removed human group, had simply filtered their interpretation through local cultural norms. The undead at Grenth's feet having their eyes averted to contrast the "enslaved" dead with the honored eternal ancestor spirits, Melandru's lower half being encased in petrified quartz rather than a living tree, or Balthazar's greatsword being a single-edged edged affair are the biggest examples. At no point was he not depicted as a large, horned, bearded man.

If his hounds were familiars they could very well be the real hounds that he crossed into Tyria with.

7:57 Is that the Engineer's thunder?! looks so puny; I remember it look and sounded badasss.

Where did you find Kormir gave up her water domain to Lyssa?

i think that since they already had the balthazar's outfit and were lazy(or maybe they ran out of time cuz this aint expansion), they decided not to make another character model for him. But how would you feel if the bring the other gods and use different character models now that an expansion is coming? Would you be happy that they look different (if they show us) or would you feel sad because it doesnt make sense (in a way) for balthazar to look exactly like the tyrian representation but other gods look different?

Hopefully the appearance of our gods is part of the world balance, and as we put more dragons to sleep we'll get more of our gods back. We could then get the old and only decent evil enemy back where they belong - the char - back under 'Gwen 2.0's spittle.

so, when you think about lore before prophecies occured, and go back to the sculptor malchor who got blinded by the gods, why didn't we get blinded by balthazar? or at least had problems looking at him?

To be fair about the mercenaries, it might have seemed more appropriate for Balthazar if he was able to keep his Lazarus disguise up a bit longer

Do you think that the reason anet is having Balth in the story, might have something to do with a new WvW map in the expansion.

Be careful believing that the look of Balthazar is set in stone, we may just see what we expect to see. Have you ever watched Babylon 5? Kosh, the Vorlon ambassador, reveals himself from his encounter suit (which hides him) at one point, every species who looks upon him sees the god of their homeworld. I've always liked this aspect of gods, they are a reflection of you and only under extreme circumstances can you see their true form.

Hey first. Balthazar is awesome I love the lore behind him. You are awesome wp

will we see more balthazar ingame anytime soon??? love your videos btw

I think a couple of people have already commented about Balthazar's appearance and why we see the hounds as hounds. Just to throw some psychology in there; if you look up an incubus (which is a sort of demon we see during sleep paralysis); throughout history it appears according to what society believes is evil, such as a witch, the devil, etc. So I wouldn't dismiss Balthazar's appearance as fixed, just as the hounds being hounds. He appears as we expect him to appear; we know he has hounds, so we see hounds. Entirely plausible even that the gods are not part of the mortal realm. Whether the devs have thought about this.. who knows. But how awesome would it be if we were with someone, from say Cantha, see something different?

I missed the Human Gods. For those that don't know in GW1 you could ONLY PLAY AS A HUMAN. So the human Gods were massively important to every story line and all lore. I love GW2 too, but I was really hoping that it wasn't the end to the (Human) Gods. Now that there's gods and dragons I'm so happy. Just waiting for Palawa Joko to return too!

Another thing, could we possibly be fighting Balth in another raid?

what if we end up looking for Dhumm help to deal with Blathazar? (well with the whole god situation)

Finally caught up to this video :) . At around 16:30 You mentioned that we may need to disregard the other culture reference to the hounds being drakes or beasts since this patch shows them as hounds. I think we may not have to if you consider how characters like eternals are depicted in media and indeed how civilisations interpret gods. If the six are gods and not Gods ( capital G ) , i.e. they are super powerful beings across space and time, then it stands to reason that mortal intellects and model of reality may not be able to take them in totality , It's entirely possible for different cultures to perceive the same cosmic power based on their lore , and evolution as society. Balthazaar, may be summoning a couple of powerful minions, and humans just happens to see them as hounds, while Canthans sees them as drakes. An example of this disconnect with perception and reality is how the human intellect is not equipped to handle objects and events in anything other than 3D space . i.e. we can't imagine how an object in 4D or even higher dimensions would look like. We just see the projections in a way that makes sense to us ( Even further, some think that reality is just a projection of 2D information from the inside edge of a black hole , but I digress :) ) This , for me , works perfectly and is consistent with the idea that The Six are ancient and powerful entities and beings, with their own lives and issues and limitations.. just beyond the comprehension of mortals . Love your work! :)

More like this!

Yes! More WP!

Hey WP do you think that Balthazar really does look like all of the different depictions of him and he just chose the Krytan form because that's how the most people would recognize him?

You going to make a 'story so far' after living story season 3 is finished? I love the story of GW2 but haven't played the game in so long

Hey WP, I don't really play GW2 anymore but I keep up with your videos and recently I've been rewatching a lot of them. In the previous video about Blathazar's reveal you were annoyed that he has a set appearance now when all the different humans (Kryta, Elona, Cantha) have different depictions of him. Well one of the mechanics from an older video that really stuck out to me was the Bloodstone madness, where people saw the apparitions on their own client to make it look like the player themself was going mad. This got me thinking that the developers missed out on something big in human character creation. If they put in the option to be able to choose where you are from (Born in Kryta, or from Elona and Cantha but stuck in Kryta). Then they could have used the same mechanic as the Bloodstone Madness and made it so different human players saw different versions of him. Of course for all of the other races all they have to go on are the human statues in Kryta or if they are part of the Order of Whispers or Durmand Priory they might have seen different pictures of him but the Krytan version would be more ingrained in their heads before then maybe.

6 elder dragons, 6 human gods... seems pretty clear that these beings are the elder dragons' emissaries... Balthazar may not have been trying to kill primordus at all, and I feel like Taimi is going to realize this in the next episode.

wp, i think it's great that balth actually looks like the humans thought. after all that assumption is based on malchor's sculptures. if it wasn't that way, the whole malchor story (wich is damn cool) would have been more or less bullshit.

When one says "hunting hound" in relation to Kryta, I think about Krytan Drakehounds, or great danes. Balthazar's hounds are mastiffs, huge and muscular dogs that in this case look extra bestial. I can definitely see them being described as lion-like. Mastiff's are probably the best choice for loosely fulfilling both interpretations. The only description that doesn't fit is Cantha's, but then there's always been an inconsistency between Cantha's and Orr's claims about the gods. At this point, it's implying that either that Canthan claim of being the land of origin for humans was either started as a lie, or Cantha was spared the elder dragons in the last coming and the human gods ruled in Cantha before eventually moving followers to Orr. Either way, Cantha either didn't ever have or didn't keep the gods' favor compared to Orr. Also worth noting Kryta was the closest geographical kingdom to Orr and thus would be the most likely (other than Orr itself) to get the details right.

What if he just looks that way because he thinks he should look a certain way because he is in Kryta? say he appeared in Cantha he would appear more akin to their depictions?

Makes me wonder, how did the Charr came to exist? Also, i'd have thought that Balthazar hates charr, why was half of his mercenaries charr?

Damn Balthzar was savage. I used to hate the charr back when playing gw1, how they made us run from our home. But when playing Charr in gw2 I realised how evil the humans were in gw1. Damn the Gods don't seem so holy anymore, I really wanna take them down.

What's his outro theme?

Maybe Balthazar is just perceived in a different form by the different cultures of the world. I seem to remember there being something like that hinted at in the original Mass Effect trilogy when it came to the appearance of the asari, so maybe something similar to that with Balthazar?

I feel like the other Gods were just being scumbags to Balthy, just like with Abbaddon they didn't like how he does things and they stripped him off his power and cast him into some realm where he escaped to get back at them. I mean how desperate must he have been to feel about conflict and war negatively now.

The fissure of Woe was my favourite area of gw1, if you need any help going through it I'd be happy to tag along :D

What if the scripture about Kaolai is so old that it's been edited? Like Balthazar didn't even show a rare gesture of sportsmanship, he just walked away. The Canthan's though, maybe the sparred village, wanted to honor Kaolai for his bravery and sacrifice and petitioned the Ministry to induct him?

I just want Melandru, I have been a fan of hers since gw1. even as a norn I would follow her. Maybe in season 4. Bath wanted war with the other races, and she wanted peace so it could be fun.

These tyrian gods are very similar to greek gods :).

Might Kormir make an entrance as well some day? Perhaps to fight of 'gone rogue' god(s)? If Balthazar makes an entrance, I don't see why other gods and ascended humans/creatures can't neither. It's foolproof that the gods are not mere myths at this point.

I've seen comments by various people saying that " This is not in character for Balthazar, he doesn't fit characteristics X Y and Z". We have never actually encountered the gods in person. Even in GW1, all we ever got to see is their avatars. They may not be gods, but they still possess great power. We actually have no clue what they are like, and Balthazar always seemed to me to be the most hostile of the gods excluding Abaddon. We only assume certain attributes based on a few stories/scriptures, and tthey are probably not accurate. Besides Grenth, there was no insight into the other gods. Grenth at the very least respected mortals as he had to look after the underworld and maintain the balance. And based on the interactions between Abaddon and the rest of the gods, they don't always get along. Balthazar might just see humans as a means to an end to accomplish a goal, he probably doesn't care if Tyria is destroyed, or it's people annihilated.

That piece of camthan lore was amazing! I wish the devs build stuff like that in the story it would give characters much more depth If they would just take more time to introduce characters that would give so much more to the story

A bit offtopic but I wonder if we'll see more about Abaddon in the future. I mean long ago we got that statue of him @ the priory which had an easter egg - a hidden teleport pad from the crystal desert. Also abaddon's margonites looked similar to the branded, perhaps his powers were similar to the ones of kralkatorrik? And why did lyssa take dominion over water? (this one is probably not relevant but she 'may' also be in tyria since balthazar used her mirror to hide -yeah it's a stretch). And lastly -what was that abaddon fractal about? (I would personally like to see a powerless/mortal version of abaddon but at least some of his secrets are plausible - maybe he was on our side all along).

Why does he have all those Orrian weapons in his inventory?

know, i remember that story step but i don't know how i got to it(Rofl). the only think i would say, give or take how you might want to take it, is that balthazar wanted Kaz/Players to know who he was, so that is why he appears as so, as for the hounds i would guess that they are the same as Balthazar (and i think you said them comparable to how he said the) can Change appearance to how he say, though because of the look of them you could consider them Lions in a manner.

Hey WP, I don't see why you don't think that the gods may appear different to each of the different civilizations? I mean they could easily be powerful enough to change their appearance, beyond even mesmer abilities

hm, flames to inspire courage or just blind berserking slaughter? you know, a la khorne

Woo! I think it was only 2 days ago that I asked you to do another lore vid and here it is! I feel so important :P (its great when coincides line up like that)

Hmm.i wonder if part of the task in the new expansion is us cleansing the corruption from the Six. I'd play that