#dhuum

𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬

- 🍄

OHH GREAT QUESTION! Nobody has actually asked me this (although even if they did I am Always more than happy to retell lore.)

Leo tends to care about death in all aspects, which includes gods/deities/forces that arent necessarily his "own" seeing as Charr have no such masters, he just doesn't view them as "Gods" per say? Just extremely powerful forces. He Greatly respects rather than reveres them. (The closest thing he would have ever considered true gods are the Elder Dragons.) He was never as prejudice against humans as a general, he was 20 by the time the treaty was signed, even then his only experience with w conscious human (Bria) was actually positive, although they never actually spoke too much about the Charr-Human conflict (for reasons thats A Whole Other Thing.) I guess maybe in terms of Grenth Himself there would only be skepticism due to the fact Leo Is Specifically a Charr, but after his whole thing at the Cathedral of Silence thats a bit washed away. Its not until Grenth leaves with the other human gods that leaves a particularly bitter taste in Leo's mouth.

ANYWAYS. What does he think of Dhuum? I don't want to give a generic "he'd hate him bc x" answer so I actually want to elaborate on things ive been musing about thats semi-related to the topics of discussion Dhuum poses:

All-Consuming, Eternal Death:

Leo actually has no problems with the idea that a soul, after entering the mists, will inevitably have its essence completely dispersed. If you asked him he would probably say something that souls should definitely exist and enjoy a time in the after-life, but that all things should inevitably end in one way or another. (More on this later.)

Preventing Resurrection and Undeath:

Dhuum seems to be of the same mind that death should never be transgressed in any means -> resurrection or any types of undeath at all. Leo does not disagree with this either, he does not like anything or anyone that willingly will escape death because he believes that straying from the natural cycle of life is.....unnatural. The times where he is kind of in a gray area on this is with Zhaitan's minions, bc if Zhaitan is death itself then what right does he have to inflict his own morality on it? But Generally Speaking this is not something he would actually Disagree with Dhuum on. But hes also a hypocrite and literally teaches Aurene about self revival through necromancy when she is a child because he couldn't stand the thought of losing her. Will this ever come up? Who knows!

Other gray areas:

Necromancy and Particular Moral Dilemmass regarding immortality and undeath are not something Leo had encountered yet but I am keeping forever in my head the idea of Leo encountering an immortal being who is the last of their kind. Because then it becomes a question of is he truly ready to confront himself over how harsh he would be towards a being that is the last person carrying the memories of millions or an entire culture alive through their undeath/immortality? Where would that put him? How would his "I do deeply hate that this is occurring" clash with "Okay so do you think I should just die then? Lol." I don't know! If it comes up then Ill have a fun field day with it. But maybe im a chud and that already exists im just forgetting it. Leo isnt the commander so maybe its possible I just forgot that lore. Oops if so.

People who are revived/made immortal out of no will of their own? (We will get into this literally rn)

Where he disagrees with Dhumm:

Leo does not think it appropriate for Dhuum to Consume Souls Himself as a way to give them an Actual True Death. Probably because Dhuum is just a very strong aspect of human death vs a god. He also doesn't agree with the idea of mercilessly hunting All types of undeath, no matter how much he also hates said ideas.

Ive talked about this before with the Mordrem or things like The Commander dying and coming back, or maybe some of the awakened too. But He finds it unfair to force his beliefs onto things where they did simply not choose to be revived. He doesnt Agree with them, per say, he does view it as a tragedy in All Regards (like being the only one not happy with the commander coming back bc he knows the implications of a soul doing such things which is Not Good) but I think Id describe it more as...pity. lol. Famously he has a mordrem wolf mount and also has the view that it simply did not ask to be made the way it was so it shouldn't be treated as this inherently evil thing bc at some point post mordremoth death they are now just...Living Things w/o the influence of a dragon. Tldr: Leo only hates when people consciously make an effort to defy death by any means, or meddling with corpses for non ritualistic purposes, this includes necromancer minions. He does not fw minions. But he feels pity rather than staunch hayred for those of which who are affected by no fault of their own. For the commander he doesnt fault them bc they were given a choice by The Judge (and therefore Allowed to) (Leo lowk doesnt like the judge for this one)

Dhuum also consumed souls for His Own Benefit which is a hugeeeeeee strike against him in Leo's eyes. If a soul ever should be dispersed or given a true death it should be naturally occuring and not something forced upon them.

More on Grenth:

Unknown if Dhuum had interacted on the same level as Grenth did in terms of appearing before people, but Grenth generally seems more benevolent in that way (Leo points 🧍‍♂️++)

But he seemed to also allow wayyyyyy more freedom when it came to undeath seeing as Necromancers/followers of grenth have no problem using minions or the fact he didn't seem to hunt down those who defied it as strictly as Dhuum did (Leo points 🧍‍♂️- )

Grenth was also benevolent enough to respect Leo's dedication to his version of necromancy and the amount of love/reverence he had both for the natural cycle /death itself and respecting the dead/ helping lost souls/spirits. Which is why Leo was able to form that initial pact between himself and Grenth which granted him his reaper shroud, even if such things did come at a Hugeee cost. (This is why you can see Grenth's symbol pop up in various parts of Leo's shroud.)

All in All he disagrees and agrees with both of them for various different reasonings. If pressed he would probably say that yes the humans were much better off with Grenth but doesnt wholly agree with all the freedoms grenth allowed compared to Dhuum.

Drew one of my other favorite Guild Wars 2 raid bosses. It was a challenge to practice foreshortening for his limbs.

After 3 fucking months, weeks of trying and failing over and over and over again, and with the help of emboldened:

We fucking cleared Dhuum and Wing 5!

with one of our statics we managed to nab a full on Dhuum CM kill (yay!)

And apparently virtuoso's piercing-ness to so many of their attacks meant we kept accidentally getting the freaking messengers-!

SEVERAL TIMES!!

It didn't always make sense considering where our virt and the messenger were either!

Eventually the two of us, and our static group, just accepted that sometimes we'd spontaneously adopt weird crab things without any reason-

...We obliged our fellow static member