Dan on bsky also just shared this with me - Melandru's scripture [link on wiki].
While on one hand, I'dd be intrigued if this might relate to the explanation of Malyck's/sylvari humanoid appearances, part of what I love about the sylvari lore is their origin with Ventari and Ronan.
I've always loved the notion that sylvari originated from the bond two individuals formed whose clans were bitter enemies. In my mind, the forging of this unlikely friendship "seeded" part of the basis for the behavior of sylvari as a whole, in addition to other aspects, like Ventari's Tablet.
I've always enjoyed thinking about their unlikely friendship as one of the reasons for their earnest wonderment, and hope, for how they venture out into the world - as "Valiants."
While I would be intrigued if this is how they could explain sylvari appearing in GW3, part of me would be a little sad to lose this aspect of their lore, as it is very unique to me, and one of the reasons I love them so much.
Edit: More speculation underneath. :D
Dan is also telling me that people are saying these are likely druids, rather than sylvari - and he speculates that while sylvari are minions of Mordremoth in HoT, perhaps they were also "touched" by Melandru in some way.
That would be intriguing if sylvari are perhaps descendants of Melandru's druids! If Melandru's druids had an even more plant-like appearance than sylvari - and sylvari are the more "modern" version of druids - similar to modern humans and our ancestors - oh, this is a fun theory indeed … ;D
It could also explain the curious absence of druids from HoT maps, as iirc, druids used to be plentiful there in the past? (Though I remember learning this years ago, I could be misremembering.)
In 2021, I began a project to dig through the Guild Wars 1 websites of all the languages, mostly hoping to recover trailers that were lost to time (mostly successfully too). I also found some lore articles that weren't available to western audiences. Such articles were known to exist - mainly lore on Abaddon for Nightfall - and those were later (mostly) canonized by ArenaNet in Guild Wars 2.
So I decided to gather and begin slowly translate them. They are now completed. And I am making this post as a link to the other posts:
Lyssa
Abaddon
Abaddon (round 2)
Dwayna
Balthazar
Grenth
Melandru
Disclaimer: While there is overlap with canon lore, there is no guarantee this is all canon as well. China is known to have alterations to the story to account for regulations in that nation, so it is unclear how much of this is expanded canon or simply reworked for China and thus non-canon.
Okay okay I may have gotten myself hyped from the post @synchrosgw2 made about Lyssa (check here!!!) and though it’s god-related, it’s not about that theory, but yeah, inspo where inspo’s due.
But I did have thoughts about how being blessed by a certain god/dess manifests in real life. I hc there’s a social ritual of joining a church and declaring yourself blessed by that particular god at the age of 8; this is because most gifts manifest themselves by that age and if they haven’t, you kinda pick one (and changing churches if you’ve made a mistake is a bit of a pain in the ass honestly and involves tons of new ritualistic stuff.) There’s a grand celebration (if you can afford it) and there are families for whom this blessing is hereditary, or so it socially stands; this is most prevalent in priestly families and to give you an example, Nyra was named after her mother’s late cousin, Alysannyra Gwent, and lady Gwent was born in a family that mostly worships Lyssa -> her name being Alysannyra (which is translated as “to Lyssa (be) the glory.”) But this is social rules, not actual magical thing.
So how does it magically play out? Spoilers for PoF.
Simple. Enhanced abilities to do something that technically belongs in that god’s realm. Let’s see how this works on my two humans, Nyra and Ren.
1) Nyra was blessed by Lyssa, even if you’d not be too far off if you thought she was blessed by Dwayna due to her guardian magic (I hc there’s a link between Dwayna and light, hence her being a guardian deity.) Lyssa is usually associated with mesmers and water elementalists, illusion, water and beauty, but also chaos, and that’s where Nyra’s gift is. She thrives in chaos to a degree that’s not quite natural. She has a much easier time making sense in chaotic/high stress situations (even if she’s not immune to the effects of too much stress, as seen in Icebrood.)
Chaos also seems to be radiating off her; a combination of being a chaos-magnet and her personality brought about the disruption of the natural world order. As subtle as this gift is, it’s not without it’s impact.
2) Due to being an illusion-based mesmer, Ren thought for a long ass while her goddess was Lyssa too. But it took a trip to Abaddon’s temple in season 3 (a rewrite of the horrible Livia situation I’m working on that features gods sending visions, Nyra and Ren working together, maybe some Mirka in there too) for her to realise that no, her patron god was Abaddon all along; for all his death, he still affects some mortals by the residue power in the world that survived, what, 2 centuries after his death.
And it manifests in her ability to hide the truth aka lie. She is an exceptional liar. If we were to compare her and El, who are both great at lying, Ren beats him because of this. You can’t really catch her tells and she seems to have an ability to track her own lies in a way that would fool 99% of the population. Again, it’s a combo of this + her personality that makes her so good at her job.
So, someone who was blessed by Balthazar might have an earned reputation of being unbeatable on the battlefield; someone blessed by Dwayna could be very very good at healing, Melandru could be very good at being a hunter to the point of being able to parallel norn, etc.
Does this mean that by Balty dying humanity was bereft of these gifts? No! Like with Abaddon, the number of people with Balty’s gifts will only be smaller, not non-existent, and other gods are still around and kicking, though priesthood of Balthazar would like to say otherwise. This is their main point for Nyra being a traitor of humankind but it’s like,, factually incorrect.
