How do you suppose the 5 Gods of tyria came to be...?

Well, I was in a discussion about the connection between the jade armor, abbadon, and mursaat when a very eerie question opened in my mind:

If Kormir was able to "become" a God, who's to say grenth, dwayna, lyssa, melandru, and balthazar weren't simply humans (or some other race) before becoming Gods themselves?

According to wiki, Balthazar, Dwayna, and Melandru all actually lived among their creations until the Exodus of the Gods. If this is true, then I believe that they were actually another part of Tyria's creations.

Furthering this, guildwiki states,

"Grenth wasn't always the god of death, and it is unclear what Grenth was before he became a god" (http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Grenth). - We know he replaced Dhuum, and although it would seem impossible for a mortal to destroy Dhuum's temple and take control of his realm, can you say ursan clear uw anyone? 8 newbs>god realm WTF?

Basically, the question I'm asking about the TRUE origins of balthazar, dwayna, lyssa, melandru, etc... , and if theres anything else to suggest that they may have been mortal at one point.

Not to mention, Abbadon was there in the beginning to give out magic to the "new creations" and yet the margonite apostate says "he may be supplanted, as he supplanted his predecessor." at the end the quest entitled, "The Apostate." There's alot of lost 'god lore' here, likely tons that will somehow play a part in gw2.

Well this is something I'm not too sure on either.

The ancient dragons are ancient, but were they around before the gods? The gods said they made tyria, but we know giants and dragons did roam tyria, possibly before the gods "made" the world, or before they finished it.

It might be possible that the Gods are lying, and there have really been several generations of gods, with mortals either being chosen or conquering their place. Or maybe when they said "the gods made the world" they weren't referring to themselves.

I do think you're right though. This will probably all be a part of GW2, as long as Kormir becomes a proper god and not the unimportant one we've seen already.

I believe there were other gods before each of the ones we see now.

Since the gods stepped out of the Mists and summoned the Forgotton from somewere. The gods had to come from somewere as did the Forgotton. The fact that even more things are hidden going back beyond the time the gods arrived on Tyria makes me think that a previous pantheon had already set foot on Tyria when it was just soil and had the GL inhabiting it.

So really there is a lot of lore we do not know going from where the gods came from to how they became gods (and even to where they went but thats another story) which is very important. Hopefully Anet will begin to explain it in GW2 so we dont have to keep creating theories. Then perhaps they will explain what Grenth was before he became the god of Death and Ice (Something which i would be interested in finding out)

This goes down to some deep philosophical questions as well, for example, who created the God that theists believe created US. Would it be simpler to just say "no, we evolved". I don't want to go to deep here tho.

If you look up lore on the mist in wiki it said before tyria the mist was first so the maybe the mist is a living form of power or something like that.

I believe
Grenth, Balthazar,Abbadon,Lyssa,Dwayna and Melandru were all Siblings.

And they defeated the gods on their own.

It is also possible that they always had these god energy or power, but they did not fit any role.
When They gained a position (such as master of the underworld, Grenth) they then created Tyria together once they had all gained the positions we know them as.

That sounds like the only possible solution.

I bet the gods and god like beings were spawned in the the Mists. Just like Razah was created in the Mists.

There are a lot of very powerful beings in-game, and the exact story about how they got that power is either missing or incomplete. At least from NF's example, it is possible for a bunch of mortals to defeat a god, (albeit a partially restrained one), then take its power. This leads me to believe that if you have the knowledge and opportunity to take power from whatever source, then you can attain some level of godhood.

One thing we never encounter are the 5 gods themselves, at least in a manner that involves levels and their combat ability. The other issue is that what we do encounter are generally portrayed as emissaries of the gods, and not the gods themselves.

I generally go w/ the idea that the mists existed as a sort of primordial environment, and developed either some sort of intelligence, or spawned various creatures that possessed intelligence. These beings then grew and developed on their own, fought each other, learned how to tap more power form the mists, or otherwise increased their power.

Regardless, I think there had to be creatures more ancient than the current gods, but overall less powerful or less intelligent, and thus were defeated or absorbed by the current gods.

Just fyi, the humans in Tyria believe the Gods created Tyria, no proof they actually did so.

Then they left Tyria long ago after Exodus of the Gods.

they were gods before that

now they are on some other world

Might just be a personification issue. The gods might have always existed as sentient active supernatural beings/forces.

When the dragons personify (draconify?) them, they might be imagined to look like dragons. Humans personify them to look like humans (or a glowy ball with a human face :O)

It need not make them any less real. The gods know about the human personifications and expectations and their avatar appear in a shape that humans can comprehend. It only makes sense to do that, otherwise why contact humans with avatars in the first place.

They might well be more sentient active forces out there, whom the gods are protecting the world from. Grenth might be one of these other forces that was taken into the fold to replace Abaddon.

Assuming that these gods know a lot about humans, so its not strange that places like the Realm of Torment and Underworld are designed by them to scare humans.

Apparently humans (and other races) can interact with and harm these beings/forces.

The fact that Kormir gets to become a god might mean that at some point in history, all the gods might have once been mortals, of one race or another.

I think this the mist is a living power and it was lonely and made simple creations at first to test it powe.r As time start to move the creations got more and more smarter or powerful. As the mist learn to controlit power 1 of the creations was maybe prototype humans and maybe it killed on of the mist simply creations when it couldn't control its power and the prototype human became the first gods?

It is quite possible that the mists "created" the gods, and the mists need not have even a small semblance of intelligence or self awareness. Random chemical reactions in earths atmosphere supposedly created the first bacteria, and if you believe evolution then random mutations took single celled organisms and eventually made them into us. It's possible the mists just one day after billions of other "failed" creations hit just the right sequence of changes to create gods or other godlike beings, but that doesn't quite explain how gods could kill each other and take their power. Maybe I'm getting into this too much.

Abaddon usurped his power from another, as did Grenth from Dhuum.

Now, before this, I always assumed the Gods were all "siblings". However, that does not fully make sense - unless the other had all usurped power as well, or Grenth is not related to them.

I do not think Abaddon is related to the other Gods. Aside from his obvious evilness, note that, at least from what we've seen, he is a lot different from the other Gods. Dwayna, Grenth, Melandru, Balthazar, and Lyssa all have humanlike forms, whilst Abaddon is a giant monster head thing.

Now, this could truly be the case for all Gods, and it is merely that the humans portray the Gods in ways that look pleasing to them, but then why are the few existing murals of Abaddon (prior to his imprisonment) showing him as we see him?

In relation to the murals, I think that like you say those are just the human portrayals of the 5 gods. The difference in portraying these gods and Abbadon lies in the fact that Abbadon's followers were mainly "extremists" who sought the strength of a God that wasn't bound by human flaws, and therefore was not seen as human.

The dragons bring up another interesting point... Could this have been one of the reasons he was scolded for giving out magic too freely? I now find it likely that the ancient dragons we will supposedly be encountering in GW2 were one of Abbadon's "oopsies" that resulted in creatures being too close in power to the gods, close enough to challenge them and win on their own.

Ok, so ill take the theory that the mist is some kind of uber powersource that is may be the source of all life and magic in tyria. Razah's creation supports this, as in wiki it states that creatures like him are spawned from its protomatter. So one or two of the gods are actually the ORIGINAL ones? Maybe there are very slight clues to this. We already know Abbadon and Grenth had predecessors, so which (if any) of Melandru, Dwayna, Balthazar, and Lyssa are the "True Gods"?

Menzies is Balthazar's half-brother, as such is only a demigod.

This sort of sounds like Greek mythology - the idea of a God impregnating a mortal and resulting in a being of lesser power.

Again, this may just be the way humans write of the Gods (actually, maybe not, considering all we hear about Menzies is from close-to-firsthand sources such as Balthazar's eternals). However, if, in fact, there is an actual "family" relationship between them, in the way that Menzies can actually have less power from being a demigod, then it is possible the Gods did have some actual human-like origin.

Yeah, im actually reading greek mythology in school atm, and sounds to me like Balthazar immulates zeus in that the titans are his enemies, as they were Zeus's enemies in his battle with his father Cronos. If Balthazar does indeed represent Zeus, then were at least 2 generations before him (Cronos, and Oranos).

Well, given the fact that the gods of Tyria are very powerful and wise, yet NOT omnipotent and NOT omniscient, we can presume that they are not some sort of eternal "it just always existed" sort of thing.

So they must have arisen from somewhere. The Lore has already explained that Kormir became a god by absorbing the "divine essence", whatever that means, of Abaddon. The Lore has also already explained that Grenth became a god by defeating Dhuum, which I can only guess also resulted in Grenth absorbing Dhuum's divine essence (although Dhuum still apparently has some sort of existence, although it's probably a physical form rather than a divine one). So that explains where Kormir and Grenth came from.

But it doesn't explain where Abaddon, Dhuum, Dwayna, Melandru, Lyssa, and Balthazar came from.

There are only so many options to consider here. Due to the fact that they are most likely not something that "simply always existed" based on the aforementioned assertions, they must have arisen after the creation of the Guild Wars Universe. The Universe itself probably just arose out of nothingness. Something can either exist, or not exist, so in the guild wars dimension, matter existed. Think of this as collapsing of a superpositioned quantum state between existence and nonexistence (DAMN YOU, SCHRODINGER!). So now you have matter and energy. Lovely. From that, existences can arise. The gods are probably simply very old and very powerful beings that arose from the primordial state of the universe. They could be energy beings that assume their physical forms by manipulation of matter. They could be manifestations of the aspects of the universe itself (if you think of the universe as a body, with the galaxies being its cells, planets and stars being its chemicals and proteins, and people/animals/plants/rocks/whatever being its atoms, you could consider the universe itself to be a living being), working their "divinity" simply from an overarching lattice of causal determinism. They could even be simpler life forms that happened to come across methods of deriving great power.

Who knows? I mean, Guild Wars is a fantasy game, so obviously the world doesn't have to be realistic, nor does it have to follow conventions of reality and physics that belong in OUR world. You can just say that the gods are MAGIC and leave it at that.

ok, begin geeky lore rant now!

well my personal theory is that the mists are the birthplace of all life (divine, and mortal). The gods are likely the first, or simply the most powerful creatures born of the mists.

The gods gained intelligence and took on humanoid (or rather we took on god-like) characteristics for w/e reason. Including reproduction, thus it's very likely there are whole generations of gods we know nothing about.

Now as for Tyria I think the gods either discovered or somehow created matter, and with this new plaything they put together a huge world, and to populate this world they created mortal beings; humans, forgotten, the works.

My theory on mortal beings in GW is that every mortal's "soul" or "spirit" is created by the mists and placed into a mortal body by the gods, when a mortal dies their soul is returned to the mists (via the factions envoys) where it is judged by Grenth, either it's returned to the mortal world, or it is put into service (or damned to servitude if they really f-ed things up as a mortal) of the gods.

so to summerize:
1. Gods came from the mists originally, but they've since started f***ing and reproducing
2. ALL life originates int he mist, the gods just send a lot of it to live on the fun world Tyria they've made
3. Reincarnation happens in GW

whew... end geeky lore rant

My crazy ideas on the god's origins...

Part 1: The Ancient Dragons were createrd from the mists, which created Tyria, along with these "Giants," which are in fact the Dragon's stronger generals *stronger then the Great Destroyer*.

Part 2: Dwayna, Melandru, Dhuum, Abaddon, Menzies, Balthazar, and Lyssa killed off these giants and obsorbed their power *through the same means that Duncan planned to absorb the Great Destroyer's power*, which gave them god-like power and eternal youth*not immortality*. Menzies, however killed a weaker general, therefore is not as strong as the others. All together, they weakened the Dragons to a point in which the Dragons had to hibernate.

Part 3: Abaddon made an mistake with giving out too much magic to "mortals," and was punished by the other "gods". Because of this, he rebeled and was cast down into the Realm of Torment. Dhuum was unjust in using his power, so Grenth killed him off, with the help of the other gods, and absorbed his power.

Part 4: The gods left the world and went to the Mists. Centuries later, the storyline of GW takes place.

My crazy idea is over

The whole "Dragons created Tyria" theory never dies.

It sounds probable though.

Not to mention that the True Giants vanished, the Prophecies manual timeline said 10,000 BE or so, and humans only arrived on Tyria around 205 BE (humans arrived in Elona at the same time too) - humans arrived on Cantha way before that, 786 BE. By the way, I was too lazy to walk an exhausting 3 meters over to my GW manuals, so I took the timeline from the wiki.

So yeah, there is about a 9,200 year gap between the time the Giants vanished and humans arrived.

Assuming the Giants are the Dragons' generals, I'd assume the Gods then imprisoned the Dragons shortly afterward, still long before humans had been created.

heads up! this is my crazy idea! *prepares for flames*

There was only one being called the Mists, who made EVERYTHING. including the Gw universe, and the planet of Tyria. Tyria (who was actually a single being on the planet of Tyria) created Dragons. She realized they were to strong, so she weakened the dragons so badly, they had to hibernate. she then 'created' giants (as a line of defense against the dragons) who were so unintelligent, she killed them off, only letting few live. She then created humans as her last line of defense. she created other creatres to feed and strengthen the humans. she then created 7 humans who would guide the human race for centuries when she would return. God's did a very poorly job at doing this, so they went into hiding as well, leaving magical components which the creatre's found to ward off the humans. the creatre's found that these were so useful they killed off the humans, leaving about 3 million alive, which half of them are in the 'War of Elona'.

Tyria: The Sister of the Mists. Created All that is Concrete.
Giants: Strong, unintelligent creatres who were made as the first defense.
Humans: The dying, defenseless race who are the destroyed and last defense.
War of Elona: the last generation of Sunspears who are fighting off the Undead Army of the Coolio Palawa Joko and the 'Darkspears'.

...crazy idea is an understatement I think...although I suppose it goes on the same idea as Gaia/Mother Earth as being a living creaure in many cultures and whatnot...

lol thx Aza

Gaia/Tyria is the only l337 hax04 explanation I could come up with. Goes with the storyline also.

Ok here goes....

Imagine the real world.

Imagine a great catastrophe that destroyed everything and all records and knowledge. Life would start from scratch, and there would be no was to know what went on before the catastrophe, and records starting from this point on would be the "start of history"

Ok got that? Now back to guild wars.

So imagine a world like tyria, an advanced magical world. In this world were nine individuals, all mortals (similar to kormir). These 9, did something similar to what Lord Odran did, they opened a portal to the mists. The mists at this time were full of divine power (similar to the power kormir was engulfed in after defeating abbadon). Being the first mortals ever to enter the mists the divine power was thrust into them giving them supernatural powers.

These 8 mortals were named: Balthazar, Dwayna, Dhuum, Lyssa and Lyss (twin sisters), Melandru, Balthazar and his half brother Menzies, and one other unnamed person.

When the mists surged through them, all of them were given powers, but some strange things happened. Lyssa and Lyss became one being when empowered with the mists. Menzies, who was the last to enter the mists, did not receive as much power as the others, and so was weaker.

These new beings realized that they had the power to create and flexed their divine muscle to create the ancient dragons (Primordus, etc.) and the Giants. Creating such powerful beings made them weary and they created the Rift in the center of the mists as their home.

While they were resting, two travelers, Grenth and abbadon, stumbled upon the portal to the mists. They entered and were greeted by Dhuum and the unnamed god. Hearing the story of how the mists had granted the gods power, grenth and abbadon decided to kill Dhuum and the unnamed god to release their power back into the mists and claim it themselves. They had come at the perfect time because the gods were still weak, and grenth and abbadon killed the 2 gods and stole their power.

In the mean time, Menzies was living with his half brother in the area Balthazar created, The Fissure of Woe. Menzies became jealous of Balthazar’s power and began to wage war with him (a battle that is still going on today).

Untold amounts of time past, until finally the gods decided that they were strong enough again and created their own world. They put the dragons to sleep, so that they would not interfere, and created Tyria.

Wanting to be thought of as divine, the gods made sure not to tell anyone or thing of the world from which they came, making believe that they were eternal and sovereign

The gods loved their creation so much that they decided to live there (Menzies of coarse was not powerful enough to come) and resided in the city they called Arah. They created Glint and the forgotten to be the caretakers of Tyria.

And you know the rest.

Seeing as Abbadon was pretty much what all the murals made him out to be i think we can disregard the "The gods are the dragons, but personified in human form". As it is i think that the dragons were most likely the old gods or the giants that vanished. The dragons would have ruled over tyria and oppresed the humans as their slaves, Balthazaar and Co liberated the humans and absorbed the powers of the deafeted dragons. Over time everybody forgot about the dragons.

Lyssa and Lyss may well have been among the last to enter (and thus receive weaker power) as well, but instead of getting resentful like Menzies, they teamed up in order to be a match for the other five as a pair.

Regarding Dhuum/Grenth and the unnamed god/Abaddon, I'd be more inclined to think this might have been the result of a disagreement between the gods that resulted in the others arranging for them to be supplanted rather than simply being ganked by surprise while they were exhausted. Especially in Dhuum's case - unless the other gods had reason to think Grenth was better than Dhuum, one would think they would have taken steps to unseat the usurper and return Dhuum to his throne (there's also hints that Dhuum is/was a particularly nasty piece of work and that the other gods were quite happy for him to be knocked off). Abaddon's predecessor, of course, we know nothing about, so we don't know where Abaddon may have got his power from.

My teory: There were several generations of gods that lied saying that they created the world.

In conclusion: When a bunch of five random guys got the Godness, then they destroy the world and make a new one. So, are dragons creatures that survided to the cataclysms of the Gods?

Well, the Tyrian Gods aren't like the monotheistic God that people believe in today. They are not omniscient or omnipotent as mentioned earlier. The Asurans obviously don't believe in them as gods, but as facets, with each god representing part of a whole (possibly the Mists?). The fact that they all represent part of a whole would mean that no god could be destroyed, which was why Kormir absorbed Abaddon's powers in NF.
I don't know exactly where I was headed with this, but just something I was thinking about. Maybe the Tyrian Gods are eternal, and are really facets of something like the Asuran believe.