Talk:The Artesian Waters

Arrival of Gods

This page and Six Human Gods say the gods first arrived at the Artesian Waters, which I thought was also mentioned in the later parts of the original personal story (c. Source of Orr), but [1] says they first arrived in Cantha.

Anyone have a good way of resolving the apparently canon conflict? --Surolam.1490 (talk) 15:46, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

How about ignoring anything from outside of the game itself? :p -Chieftain Alex 17:00, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

We also have the Parables of the Gods saying that the gods did not originally land and stay in Orr. They were persuaded to move there by humans.

I can't find a source which claims the gods first came to Tyria the world as opposed to the continent due to the Artesian Waters. I always took the in-game lore to mean they started in Cantha, and were attracted north due to the waters. Our page may need to be cleaned up. G R E E N E R 17:58, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Cathedral of Silence (story): "The place where the Six Gods first walked upon Tyria. I never dreamed I'd see it, yet now we know it is the end of our great journey." — Trahearne I'm guessing that's where it came from? - Do_odleplex 18:09, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. And in the same section we have "Human myth says that when the Six Gods came to Tyria, they built the city of Arah. The "source" must be the place where they first set foot on Tyria." Seems like another case of humans retconning their history. Origin of the bloodstones, anyone?. I may or may not be referring to in-game humans.

Still, it can be weaseled out of if that were meant to mean Tyria the continent. It's just awkward. G R E E N E R 18:35, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

That article says when they first arrived on the Canthan continent. Not when they first arrived on the world. We do not know when they - or humanity - first arrived on the world. It's been long established that Cantha was not the first land humans stepped foot on in the world. Earliest hints of such, from the top of my head, are in gww:An Empire Divided, but interviews with Jeff Grubb post-Eye of the North pre-GW2 also said the same, that humans came from somewhere else in the world first.

The Parables of the Gods is partially Unreliable narrator which we see a lot in GW - Thrulnn the Lost and Priest of Abaddon are both prime examples of unreliable narrators in GW2 (as is Ghosts of Ascalon, which throughout the novel presents 3 versions of what happened to cause the Foefire - the charr version, the human version, and the real version). There's far more evidence to point to the Parable line being wrong than right - including first-hand proclamation from an avatar of Grenth, Orrian history, and Trahearne. Doodleplex quoted Trahearne from that instance, but The Seventh Reaper in that same instance is more reliable: "The Seventh Reaper: So shall it be. You seek the heart of Orr? Then you must go to the very beginning. The rock where the gods first set foot upon this world."

The matter of "who built Arah" is a very, very large unknown - unlike "which landfall came first, Orr or Cantha" question, there is no heavy evidence pointing one way or the other. Orrian History Scrolls says that the gods had built it (or at least, finished building it), while the Parables say humans built it to lure the gods there. Still, however, we have the Altar of Glaust which we got dev statement saying the ritual performed there is geographically tied, meaning that altar predates the Six Gods "building" Arah, implying that the foundations of Arah are of Forgotten origin then expanded upon by the gods and the hidden Parables of the Gods replaced "Forgotten origin" with "human origin" (or that Warden Ilyra's proclamation that Glint was cleansed before the Six Gods arrived on the world is false - after all we do not have a date for when they arrived - and the Six Gods or humans built the Altar of Glaust as well). Konig (talk) 19:36, 6 September 2017 (UTC)