Future of the Underworld

[ThatOddOne.4387]

So it appears that at the end of the Dhuum fight, the Reapers die.

 

"Desmina: The Voice in the Void is silenced again.

Character name: The reapers paid a heavy price.

Desmina: They did as they were meant to do. As you did.

Character name: And what happens now? There's no one left to rule the Underworld.

Desmina: Isn't there?

Desmina: Now leave me."

 

This makes me sad, but I suppose it could be interpreted as it being the Reapers' duty to sacrifice themselves to seal Dhuum away for good. A last action or command of Grenth.

 

Desmina is likely the ruler of the Underworld now in Grenth's place. Thoughts on this?

 

Another pretty interesting thing to note is what the Reapers say when they are called:

 

"Desmina: The way to death is open. Return! Dhuum must fall.

Desmina: The influence of the statues overcome Dhuum's corruption. The gates are unlocked. Our allies are here.

Reaper of the Labyrinth: We will do what must be done, red witch.

Reaper of the Forgotten Vale: We've returned to silence the Voice in the Void.

Reaper of the Ice Wastes: Defend us to the death! If one of us falls before the ritual begins, Dhuum's escape is assured.

Desmina: Do not let them fail the ritual. I'll help as my strength allows."

 

From the wording, it seems to imply they actually left with Grenth, but were called/sent back.

 

Which of course raises all sorts of timeline questions about the Reaper that was encountered in Orr.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Since the gods supposedly left to another world to prepare it like they did Tyria, it wouldn't surprise me they took their most faithful - that would explain why The Sanctum had fallen despite being the heart of Kormir's domain, if her strongest and most faithful (the maidens, I presume) left with her.

 

However, that dialogue doesn't speak to me that they left the Underworld itself, so much as they were not at the Ice Wastes. Possibly to avoid being twisted by Dhuum until the time was right to confront him. They returned from other parts of the Underworld that they govern, is how I interpreted it. Though I'm not sure they would leave Dhuum to break free, so them going to the other world, returning for this, would make some sense - as for the "timeline issues", if the call could reach the other world, then there's no issue at all.

 

Further, it's pretty heavily implied by dialogue that the Reapers' death was not intended:

 

Reaper of the Ice Wastes: We've done it! The ritual is complete!

Dhuum: YOU CANNOT VANQUISH DEATH ITSELF.

Desmina: Return to your bodies at once!

Desmina: Stand in for the reapers! Buy us time. Dhuum must never escape!

 

And it's not on the wiki yet, but there is dialogue with Desmina after defeating Dhuum where the PC points out that it was "very convenient" that Desmina regained her strength and was able to help when the ritual nearly failed and the Reapers died. She even mentions how the bonds are strengthened enough to hold Dhuum for eternity, giving the implication that she caused the ritual to fail and used the Reapers to strengthen Dhuum's prison to much greater lengths than ever before.

 

One thing I'm curious about: Where's the Judge in all of this? Is he not "someone to rule the Underworld" too?

 

Or Raven, for that matter, who is said to hold sway in the Underworld.

[ThatOddOne.4387]

Interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about Desmina 'usurping' or otherwise being responsible for the deaths of Grenth's most trusted servants, but I suppose it could be interesting... If it's ever explored more. If she is outright usurping or taking dominion of the Underworld though it seems remarkably 'short sighted' since she still won't have Grenth's divine power and presumably if he ever returned he could flick her on the forehead and that would be that. Usurpation does not sound like a particularly smart thing to do when you don't have the power of a God on your side to begin with.

It's either that or Dhuum had a moment where he legitimately could have broken free and that took the Reapers and Desmina by surprise but the situation was still able to be salvaged.

The Judge is another factor, perhaps his purview is restricted to the Domain of the Lost. As a side note, Grenth definitely seems to be the God that has the most 'named' servants in the lore. Likely because the Underworld is the realm players have interacted with the most over the years, mind.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

>If she is outright usurping or taking dominion of the Underworld though it seems remarkably 'short sighted' since she still won't have Grenth's divine power and presumably if he ever returned he could flick her on the forehead and that would be that. Usurpation does not sound like a particularly smart thing to do when you don't have the power of a God on your side to begin with.

 

The way she characterizes Grenth as having 'fled', she doesn't seem to have much respect left for her old boss. It's also quite possible that, as his first servant, she knows something we don't.

[Kossage.9072]

Glad to hear you're finding some intrigue in the raid lore. Trying to get the dialogue added to the wiki without raiding can be an arduous task without raiders' assistance (especially when many raid vids have a guild or channel logo blocking the text box), but we'll do what we can. I still need to find a way into raid instances in different completion phases to flesh out articles for Glenna and Desmina as far as their dialogue is concerned.

 

Aside from what's already been said, there are two other notes of interest in the raid from what I've witnessed:

 

1) During the River of Souls escort Desmina specifically states that "Grenth fled" in a cold tone. Given how she's the god's First Follower, you'd expect her to sound a bit more polite in her wording choice instead of making it sound like Grenth was uncaring or a coward. However, this may foreshadow Desmina's growing discont and perhaps feeling betrayed/abandoned because she couldn't understand (or refused to understand) why Grenth had to leave the Underworld and why he never came to face Dhuum again (that we know of).

 

2) In the guild chat focusing on Hall of Chains, one of the raid devs had this to say about the event involving the Reapers:

 

**Byron Miller:** The Reapers again, as has been happening for thousands of years, have come to reseal Dhuum. Maybe it goes a little wrong this time. Maybe someone meant for that to happen, maybe someone didn't, you know. It sort of remains to be seen. [source](

)

 

This heavily implies, to me, that we haven't seen the last of the story arc of Hall of Chains, and it may lead to future raid wings or potentially even have ramifications in the Living World if they follow the White Mantle/Eye of Janthir arcs that continued from the raid to the respective S3 episodes.

 

It would actually be pretty interesting for the story to explore [Mausollus](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mausollus), another obscure Grenthian priest character with ties to not only to Grenth but also to Elona; he was the first priest to spread Grenth's teachings to Elona from Orr and lived among the people of Istan and Vabbi. It's unfortunate that, as far as I know, there haven't been any references to him anywhere in Elona with him only being noted in the Cathedral of Silence story instance in Personal Story, and the Mausollus Sea in Orr.

 

Hopefully the potential continuation of the Desmina plot means we'd also see more of [Priestess Rhie](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Priestess_Rhie) who played an important part in the Personal story. It'd make sense for her to be interested in the Reapers' fates, and she might reveal more about Desmina and/or Mausollus to us depending on what she knows from her church's ancient texts. It felt a bit odd not having any notable necromancer NPCs playing a part in the raid as one would imagine that Desmina's call reached Rhie who would've been honored to help fight Grenth's old enemy alongside the Reapers after her previous encounter with the Seventh Reaper in the Cathedral of Silence. Would've also been cool if the Reaper of the Ice Wastes, for example, would've had a brief snippet of dialogue for a player character who's completed the Cathedral of Silence instance as a nice callback to that story beat...unless it already exists in the raid and no one's noticed it yet.

 

As for the Personal story events, it is possible the Reapers were busy figuring out how to get to Dhuum after he reversed the seal to prevent Grenth's followers from getting into the Hall of Judgment, so the Seventh Reaper (Reaper of the Ice Wastes or not) may have been on a busy schedule at the time he was summoned to the cathedral in the story instance. Interestingly the Seventh Reaper says this in the [story instance](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cathedral_of_Silence_(story)):

 

**The Seventh Reaper:** The keeper of this shrine has fallen to Zhaitan. Grenth wishes him returned, but I am too weak to perform the task.

 

This might imply that Dhuum's doings have somehow weakened the Reaper and his fellows, thus forcing the Commander, Rhie et al to finish off the Risen Keeper instead. The wording of "Grenth wishes him returned" could be poetical in a general sense, indicating Grenth's general desire to not let his servants linger under Zhaitan's corruption instead of Grenth specifically mentioning the Keeper in particular to the Reaper as it seems that the gods ventured deeper into the Mists hundreds of years ago rather than in Personal story times, hence no more resurrection magic in Tyria (if not counting the strange artifacts like the mysterious Eternal Flame which Gaheron Baelfire tried to use in Citadel of Flames explorable path 2 to bring himself back to life.

 

All in all, the raid left many questions although it at least seems to have set the stage for more plot developments once/if they continue the plot with Desmina in some way. :)

[ThatOddOne.4387]

Mn. Still not sure I'm comfortable with all this talk of Grenth 'fleeing'. One hopes there's a good reason for his and the rest of the Gods' departure, if Garden of the Gods is accurate, then that'd be good enough. But it would be nice to get some confirmation as to what the Gods are doing and yes it does justify leaving their realms in peril to do so. And also not tell the trusted followers they're leaving behind what they're doing so, you know, they don't grow discontent like Desmina is apparently doing/has done.

 

This 'retconning' of the Gods being uncaring or cowards is not something that sits right with me. As I've said before, if that is the way things are going, then ArenaNet are delivering a massive kick to the nether regions of the human narrative and basically going "haha you were stupid for believing in the gods". Which is not how you treat one of your playable races, and the most popular one.

[Kossage.9072]

It is admittedly interesting that Grenth and Lyssa in particular would be fine leaving humanity to its fate for now given how they, if the texts about them are accurate, were both champions of humanity in their days: Grenth and his seven mortal companions overthrew Dhuum who was an unjust god in order to make the Underworld a somewhat better and just place for spirits to move on, and Lyssa wanted to help humanity forget their past and even wept when she was forced to retreat into Arah instead of staying disguised among the Orrians she so cared for.

 

And yet, after Eye of the North, these two gods would be willing to leave humanity face the destruction on their own without at least contacting their followers (via avatars, dreams, what have you) to give the mortals crucial info that Tyria could use to their advantage even if the gods themselves could not intervene out of fear of causing the end of the world regardless if they won against the Elder Dragons or not. Even Glint herself speculated about how much the gods knew and, depending on the circumstances, why she was not privy to the gods' plan despite helping the Forgotten (gods' servants) in their task.

 

If [Kormir's journal](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Journal_of_Kormir) is any indication, Lyssa even mocked her for lingering behind, which seems a rather contradictory stance for the goddess who once cared for humanity so much. In Grenth's case I can somewhat understand it as he likely underwent the same revelation Kormir did after ascending to full godhood, and he realized that the gods' responsibilities extend far beyond Tyria even if in Grenth's case his home is Tyria. In Lyssa's case there are two alternatives that I can think of without simply retconning her character (which, of course, is also possible given how the writers for GW lore have changed over the decades and how original ideas may have also adapted to new storylines):

 

a) Lyssa was never truly caring as depicted in some of the texts (and suggested in the [Parable of Lyssa](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Parables_of_the_Gods#A_Parable_of_Lyssa)) and those benevolent depictions in scriptures etc. were simply the humans' interpretations and softening of her character for the church's needs as per ANet's unreliable narrator/biased NPC views tradition, or

b) Lyss and Ilya have different personalities or shifting moods, thus explaining why Lyssa may at one point be depicted as very caring and at other points cruel (fitting for a goddess linked to, well, chaos).

 

From what we can see, though, the gods do seem to care for humanity and Tyria to some extent but also realize that their meddling has caused as much bad things as it has caused good things (see e.g. the gifting of magic and the fall of Abaddon) so they need to be careful with what they do, and they may have responsibilities elsewhere as the Garden of the Gods (which is admittedly biased NPC view) suggests. There's also the fact that the gods apparently may want humanity to stand on its own feet similar to parents who expect their children to manage on their own without relying on their assistance all the time.

 

This doesn't explain why Kormir chose to be cryptic for the sake of being cryptic about how to defeat Balthazar when advising Dragon's Watch, though (unless we go with the parental analogy for her to want them to figure out stuff on their own), or why she couldn't give them a useful book about Elder Dragon origins or their weaknesses (that the gods seemingly may have known of to some extent based on the [scroll or Tome of the Five True Gods](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tome_of_the_Five_True_Gods) from "Hidden Arcana" story instance which revealed the dragons' names among other things) to help them in their struggle.

 

So, to be fair, we have to keep in mind what the narrative designers have uttered at least since the days of Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee: the case of deliberately biased NPC views and the use of unreliable narrator, which doesn't necessarily mean retconning per se. See, for example, Elder Thrulnn's account on the fall of the jotun and what caused it compared to what the actual jotun spirits who once lived that time (or the stuff we learn in Arah explorable path 1) reveal, and you'll see why we should always take NPC accounts with a grain of salt.

 

Everything we've heard of the gods came from sources that were not the gods themselves (unless you count the avatars seen at the end of Nightfall as the gods directly speaking instead of them just retelling what the gods had told them). Most of the lore, however, comes either from old tales, scriptures, or NPCs heavily biased towards their patron god, so we haven't necessarily had the unbiased truth about the gods, thus forcing us to look at multiple sources of different accounts (enemies, allies, humans and other races alike) to get as expansive a picture as we can about the elusive truth behind it all.

 

I, for one, look forward to learning more about the gods if we get another chance at it because some of the hints presented in S3 and PoF, and Hall of Chains to an extent, have been quite intriguing. Time will tell what fate befalls the Underworld and if we might see some involvement from Raven as well given that Spirit's relation to the Undeworld. :)