What Do We Know About JANTHIR? | Guild Wars 2 Minute Lore 

Kind of, kind of not. GW1 definitely gave the impression via its cinematics and missions that Livia locating the Scepter of Orr (shown as a major moment on par with Pyre's revolution and the Pale Tree blooming) and the wounded Lazarus vowing to return with a vengeance seemed to set up this grand storyline (or storylines, rather) with one GW2 expansion with Lazarus as a big bad (with or without Livia returning). Instead they left the real Lazarus as a footnote at the end of Season 3 (when we were already dealing with dragons, White Mantle, and Balthazar, so it was a busy enough season as it was), never giving him a satisfying enough story when Balthazar stole most of his glory. So I don't think they had intricate plans for the Lazarus and Eye stuff, or if such existed, those ideas were discarded in narrative team meetings as they chose to resolve the Lazarus plotline quickly instead of leaving the real Lazarus's fate a mystery until a later storyline. Perhaps the idea was to wrap Lazarus's story in a set of raids after the buildup of his return in the Forsaken Thicket raids but the devs shied away from that after vocal player complaints of locking Saul D'Alessio and Eye of Janthir story behind the fourth raid wing which was too difficult for most players to complete. Something that could've been avoided if they'd given us easy mode raids (or soloable story instance raids) to begin with instead of forcing people to try to get good with not so good results...

Well, their blog post addressed the issue of trying to tell too grand a story for the SotO storyline, which is why they're withholding the third Janthir Wilds zone until quarterly patches 2 and 3 for a tighter story (as opposed to Nayos's three expanding patches with some filler stuff in them), so JW patch 1 seems to only feature the open world (and instanced) raid as a story continuation of sorts. It seems like Janthir Wilds story will feature titans leeching power from the land to grow stronger although it remains unclear if any of the higher titans (if such exist among them) have a grander goal or they're just remaining stragglers roaming around randomly with no overseer like Abaddon or Dhuum guiding them (especially after Dhuum's imprisonment in a raid). We should hopefully finally meet Waiting Sorrow and learn if she's been mingling with the lowland kodan and why she went rogue and disappeared from the Wizard's Court with her ascension powers instead. Devs have teased that the second zone, Janthir Syntri, will be wracked with magical storms, so I wonder if that's the titans' (or whoever the big bad may be) doing or a side effect of Waiting Sorrow's experiments depending on what she has in mind...

It seems like it’s just gonna be tackling a few races and their interconnected history. Mustafar ruins their rivalry with titans and Kodan living in the area all the while… I don’t think the big bad (titans it seems?) will be a world class threat like the old days

The key art (showing the Commander and kodan charging at a massive titan), and the end of Janthir Wilds trailer with that towering shadow, do indicate that we're going to be facing at least this elemental type of titan in multiple sizes. They will likely retain the GW1 titan idea of splitting into multiple lesser versions of themselves upon being defeated in their colossus form, thus explaining the multitude of smaller titans roaming about.

They definitely shouldn't be extinct, at least as far as the mursaat external Tyria go. Secrets of the Obscure lore books and flashbacks of Isgarren and Mabon reveal that Optimus Caliph's group of mursaat (including Mabon and the infamous Lazarus the Dire) were banished to Tyria by other mursaat for reasons we don't know other than the banishment was seen as a form of punishment. Dialogue from Mabon and Isgarren also indicates that there are "fair but brutal" mursaat out there, seemingly in Nayos which seems to be the mursaat's homeworld that they once shared with Kryptis). However, in our Nayos excursion we didn't find any trace of these mursaat beyond one vague item referencing mursaat and Janthir whose selfish wording of abusing power seems to more refer to Optimus Caliph's extremist mursaat than the "fair" Nayos mursaat as a whole. Yet seemingly something related to mursaat had to have survived in Nayos for the Eye of Janthir to stick around Eparch's citadel as long as it did once it moved on from Tyria. After all, since we ended its purpose as watcher (and sustainer) of prisoners in the Bastion of the Penitent, the Eye's next mission was to locate any surviving mursaat or objects containing their essence but Mabon avoided detection likely due to his ascended body after Lazarus was slain. We know that Mabon shielded Janthir magically sometime around the fallen god Abaddon's death as a journal references the death of the lich lord Khilbron and the closing of the Door of Komalie that stranded some titans on Tyria as well as the ending of Nightfall. Given how Amnytas World Spire and several beacons' power was disrupted by the Void crisis and Aurene's ascension as the One Elder Dragon affecting the All, it wouldn't surprise me if this brief destabilization of magic also affected Mabon's wards and ended up causing unforeseen consequences, especially because some titans (who mostly hunted for mursaat along with assisting Abaddon and Khilbron's plans for world domination) are now confirmed to roam in Janthir leeching power from the land (and maybe trying to locate any mursaat if such still exist in Janthir despite centuries since most of the Tyrian mursaat were slain).

I do hope we get to visit Abaddon's Mouth, the setting of Hell's Precipice mission, in GW2 one day in some future mini expansion set on the Fire Islands. Currently the two zones in the Fire Islands (Ember Bay and Draconis Mons) surround that infamous isle but for whatever reason they didn't allow us to set foot in that iconic location in GW2 so far...

There’s definitely space for a 3 map expansion in the rest of the isles but they’d probably add another volcano south so that the draconis Mons southern shore part isn’t just black rocks lol. In any case I’d love and be very down with an expansion giving the rest of that region

Considering the Charr shouts false gods, it may indeed be referring to the titans. (The whole titans being the Gods of the flame legion and all) However it may also be referring to the Mursaat as they are the false Gods of the Humans

@@TheScrootch It is indeed referring to the titans. The title of the official key art (featuring the being) referred to them, and there was also this mention in the Janthir Wilds press kit: "Titans: The mysterious magical entities of Janthir channel the energy from the very land itself, a mystic and ineffable enigma in this unexplored region of Tyria..." We players have more info written down in GW2 wiki's article titled Titan if anyone's curious. :)

@@Kossage Cool! I wasn't aware of that, thanks!

It is interesting that they're tying kodan of all people into the Janthir storyline when you'd think it'd deal with other elder races and humans at most. I suppose the main reason is to continue the Waiting Sorrow (a kodan wizard who went rogue after creating the Heart of the Obscure) plotline that was left unresolved in SotO, and we may yet encounter her on Janthir doing who knows what as she seems a rogue element whom Isgarren has oddly allowed to do whatever she's doing despite having grand ascension powers that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Even having the Ash Legion Imperator Malice Swordshadow as one of the main heroes on the Janthir expedition is curious because she should just send one of her tribunes (at most) to investigate the matter as she should be busy handling her own legion as the charr are still recovering from the Dominion civil war. Why couldn't Blood Legion Imperator Crecia just send Rytlock (who's bored of paperwork and is itching for another fun romp) along instead as he's already a world-renowned adventurer? I also wonder what Caithe's reasoning for joining the expedition is; just boredom and curiosity now that Aurene's asleep despite Caithe being the leader of the Crystal Bloom and should be busy organizing them instead? At least this expansion's plot should finally reveal what was up with that weird side note in Season 3 that suggested that Caudecus was headed for Janthir, a seemingly random decision when he had already procured jade constructs from Bloodstone Fen before Valette Wi teleported him and some of their closest followers to safety before they'd resurface for the siege in Lake Doric. Maybe we'll find some journals left behind by Caudecus or even find White Mantle survivors of his expedition being stranded there but they need to explain how Caudecus and his cronies managed to bypass Mabon's elaborate wards. I'd love to see Valette Wi (Anise's current ward) return as she might be the only one around who might have some inkling of what's been going on in Janthir assuming that she accompanied Caudecus there. I just hope that they pay tribute to GW1 lore and actually have some of the more powerful titans speak like in that one charr mission in Nightfall. Perhaps one Armageddon Lord (the highest-ranked titans) might've survived and is leading these remnants of a titan horde. The bigger question is if any new titans are being created and how when most (if not all?) of the GW1 titans were created by Dhuum's lieutenant, the Fury, in the Foundry of Failed Creations before we shut that operation down in GW1. Are they going to suggest that Kormir's departure and Balthazar's death has emboldened the gods' enemies like Menzies or any of Dhuum's surviving lieutenants to mess with the titans and try to return the foundry back to its former glory, and the ripples of that action may end up being reflected on Tyria? That is, of course, assuming that new titans are being created to explain why so many of them seem to be concentrated on Janthir when GW1 Hero, Pyre Fierceshot and others spent quite a bit of time hunting down titans back in GW1...