Tyria & the Mists

In the Guild Wars universe, The Mists is the space between worlds. It's always been an important part of the world, but it's used as a hand-wave for game mechanics like structured PvP & World vs World too. There's a meta-plot for WvW, and Janthir Wilds has a fresh development.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ This post contains spoilers for all parts of Guild Wars 2. Proceed at your own risk! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

The Mist War

WvW is the week-long battle between three alliances. It happens in The Mists as a hand-wave: when you're there, you're outside of the normal world. We call it the Mist War.

The lore set-up is that invaders are coming from alternate versions of Tyria, for ambiguous reasons. These other Tyrias are probably not real -- they're fractal echoes of our own world. Their denizens may be fleeing from their own dying Tyrias because the Elder Dragons have wrecked their worlds to the point of being uninhabitable.

The matches themselves exist in a fractal state: they reset and replay, over and over, infinitely. We cannot win the Mist War -- by fighting and dying out there, on the borderlands between the Mists & Tyria, we can only hope to buy our world another week.

This already raises some questions. There are other worlds connected to Tyria via the Mists -- which are presumably "real" worlds and not echoes -- such as the human homeworld. When the 'gods' came from the Mists and colonized Orr, they brought their pet species to Tyria. These didn't exist in Tyria before, so they cannot be echos fleeing an alternative Tyria, right?

Astral Ward

Defending Tyria from invaders coming in from the Mists is supposed to be the Astral Ward's function. Isgarren makes a wry comment about the most notable invaders in a book about the Scepter of Orr:

Since their creation at the hands of my people, Sidony believed Legavo and Mulmund would be essential in our defense against extraplanar invaders. I once thought as she did, but we were wrong time and again.

The mursaat would eventually ward their armors against the staves' unique magics, well before they become known as the Scepter of Orr and the Staff of the Mists. Eventually, the gods and their servants came, unabated and unhindered. It was clear the staves were not the miracles we thought they were.

The kryptis & titans are both extraplanar invaders that the Astral Ward has chosen to engage. But it makes me wonder: why haven't we seen the Ward on the WvW borderlands before?

The obvious answer is "they didn't exist in the story when the game developers made WvW". That's fair -- but now that the Ward does exist, I think we do need an explanation.

The nature of the Mists makes it easy to retcon them in: it's an ephemeral battle against nebulous "invaders" that replays itself indefinitely. The Ward could have been there the entire time fighting next to us in Stonemist Castle, but Wizard Magic obscured their distinctive armour.

Story Developments

The Mist War is largely a hand-wave for the WvW game mechanics, but we have had two "story" developments in recent years: the addition of the Armistice Bastion in 2019, and warclaws.

As far as I can tell, there isn't lore associated with Armistice Bastion. It's a premium lounge with access to WvW team chat. But there's a passage on the wiki that an editor wrote based on their own speculation¹:

Mist Warriors of other Tyrias tend to be seen as pure evil, justifying the conflict; however, the recent appearance of the neutral zone of Armistice Bastion muddies the waters as it allows the competing soldiers from rival worlds to interact peacefully within its boundaries.

As part of the the GW2 China beta event circa 2014, I guess some of the devs made a few interesting statements. I don't know if this is necessarily canon², since this is not reflected in-game:

World Vs. World is where all of these different versions of Tyria fight each other for resources in their own respective battles with the Elder Dragons, (The Borderlands and such are the literal borderlands between different versions of Tyria).

Armistice Bastion was added while we still had three (four?) extant Elder Dragons, so it shouldn't represent cooling inter-world tensions. The battle against world-ending cataclysms was still in full swing back then.

But also consider: time doesn't work right in the Mists. Things that have happened in the past are fixed there, replaying forever. What if Armistice Bastion was an echo of an inevitable future for Tyria? After Balthazar's defeat, our victory over Soo-Won was assured -- we just had to play our parts and actually win in our Tyria.

But that's wild speculation.

Mist War Warclaw

The warclaw mount was another addition to WvW in 2019. This one had a bunch of lore associated with it.

The basic idea is: the Mist War has raged on for a very long time. A previous epoch of civilization in Tyria -- or perhaps elsewhere -- has expended themselves completely, but their spirits linger in the Mists. The warclaw itself is a construct: we've assembled a set of armour, and a spirit from that previous epoch is bound to the armour. When we want to ride our warclaws, we're calling that spirit to manifest into its armour.

The armour for the WvW warclaw has some Time Fuckery:

The materials used in the armor's construction appeared Tyrian, but its style seemed to correspond to several cultures throughout different points in Tyria's history. Quite simply, there was no singular match—and our instruments indicated there was a greater mystery to the armor than its origin.

I am not sure what cultures this draws from, though:

It's also worth noting that Balthazar's forged were similar to the warclaw: he made armour and bound a spirit to it. This ancient steed for the Mist War was created using a technique Balthazar also knew how to mass-produce.

There's probably some connection between the "gods" or the human's homeworld. The Priory's book didn't say which cultures the warclaw armour's design was drawing on. If it's all human civilizations ... well, perhaps they lost their war, and that's why they needed to move to Tyria?

Journeykin

The lowland kodan of Janthir have their own warclaws -- although they call them "journeykin" instead. These are warclaws au naturel -- that is, they appear to be biological creatures instead of spirits bound to armour:

The Mist War isn't common knowledge to average Tyrians, but the Astral Ward has noticed the similarity. Two NPCs in the Moon Camp picked up on it, but they're not able to draw any interesting conclusions:

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I guess it makes sense that they don't immediately notice they look the same, even if the Ward has seen WvW warclaws -- journeykin aren't covered head-to-toebeans in armour.

It's curious that the journeykin are native to Janthir and nowhere else. If they've transited between the isles, why haven't they made their way deeper into the woodland cascades? Drizzlewood's environment is similar to the Janthir Wilds; I'm sure they could find food there.

But Janthir has some kind of mursaat city, bloodstone, and maybe a secret third thing that drew the titans here³. The mursaat city is probably connected to the Mists in some manner -- mursaat seemed to have a natural ability to "phase out" of Tyria and into the Mists. Maybe that connection is what keeps the jouneykin tied to Janthir?

Alliances

Removing the launch worlds and replacing them with match-made alliances is purely a game mechanic. But I am hoping that the project being completed after six years means they'll be able to move on to more interesting WvW developments.

If it's true that the invaders were driven to Tyria by their own (lost?) battles against their Elder Dragons, then we've got a moment in time where the story of WvW can advance into something less sinister.

sPvP happens in the Mists, but it's more of a competition: prove your heroism against other folks from across space and time. WvW could evolve into that, giving us a lore justification for a return of WvW Seasons: a more structured, organized, and fair contest run in the spirit of competition.

Maybe. That's my hope, anyways! 🤞