Lazarus

Lazarus

Race

Mursaat

Profession

Elementalist
Necromancer

Rank

Legendary

Locations

• Confessor's Stronghold
  (Fragmented Wastes)
  
• Dragon Vigil
  (Tarir, the Forgotten City)
  
• Taimi's Pet Project
  (Rata Novus)
  
• The Last Chance
  (Abaddon's Reliquary)

Organization

White Mantle

“

I am the last mursaat. Many years ago, you knew me as Lazarus the Dire. I have returned from the brink of existence!

— Lazarus

Lazarus the Dire is the last surviving mursaat according to Tyrian scholars. He was one of the mursaat responsible for the creation of the White Mantle via influencing the cult's founder Saul D'Alessio. He survived the Krytan Civil War which saw many of his fellow mursaat slain and the White Mantle toppled by the Shining Blade who placed Salma on the vacant throne of Kryta. However, he was gravely injured and forced to split his essence into multiple aspects housed in various artifacts to await for his eventual revival but not before swearing vengeance on future generations for what had been done to him.

However, after being revived and empowered by the exploding Maguuma Bloodstone in 1329 AE, Lazarus claims to have turned a new leaf, choosing to focus his efforts on fighting the Elder Dragons rather than follow Confessor Caudecus's plans for the White Mantle to take over Kryta from Salma's descendant Queen Jennah. To achieve his ends, Lazarus aims to join forces with the Pact Commander and Dragon's Watch. The Lazarus empowered by the Maguuma Bloodstone is later revealed to be the disguised Balthazar, God of War, who has used the infamous mursaat's appearance to trick the White Mantle into helping him in his campaign against the Elder Dragons, while the real Lazarus has lain dormant for centuries. Livia and the Commander locate and bring the scattered artifacts housing the mursaat's aspects together in Abaddon's Reliquary where they revive and ultimately slay Lazarus with the magical Shining Blade to prevent him from becoming a threat to Kryta and the rest of Tyria ever again.

Biography

Early years

Lazarus, along with other mursaat, originated from Nayos, the Realm of Dreams. He was a member of a mursaat faction which was banished to Tyria as punishment although the reason for this punishment and why Tyria in particular was chosen for their place of exile remains unknown. Compared to this banished faction, other mursaat external Tyria are purportedly brutal but fair. The Tyrian mursaat eventually had children of their own; it is unclear if Lazarus was one of the original mursaat exiles to Tyria or if he was their descendant.

Lazarus was among the most powerful of the Tyrian mursaat, having mastered the use of elementalism and necromancy. During the previous rise of the Elder Dragons, the mursaat allied with the other ancient race of Forgotten to fight the Elder Dragon Zhaitan, only to fail and suffer severe losses when none of the other magically gifted elder races—dwarves, jotun, and Seers—came to their aid; the Seers, despite having urged everyone to form the alliance, had decided to withdraw their support at the last moment for unknown reasons. The mursaat viewed this lack of assistance as a betrayal and used their shadowcraft, which allowed them to travel through a shadowed pocket of existence within Tyria, to hide from the Elder Dragons and leave the rest of the Tyrian races to fend on their own. They bided their time until the Elder Dragons fell into slumber and returned to Tyria.

Sometime after the Elder Dragons had returned to their slumber, the mursaat and the Seers waged war for thousands of years. During that war, the mursaat began using a terrible weapon called spectral agony, which killed its victims while causing them indescribable amounts of pain. Although the few hundred mursaat were heavily outnumbered by the Seers, they nevertheless managed to make the Seers all but extinct during the lengthy conflict. After defeating the Seers in Janthir and sending the few remaining survivors into hiding, the mursaat built their new capital, Bava Nisos, on the site of that battle.

After learning to hide from those without the gift of true sight, the mursaat began manipulating Tyrian events in secret. Lazarus was instrumental in helping his people influence members of the other sentient races of Tyria. Some mursaat elders wanted to continue their race's original mission of finding a way back to their homeworld, but the younger generations that aligned with the zealotry of Optimus Caliph, Lazarus, and Sarlic the Judge wanted to change the original mission into becoming rulers of Tyria instead. These disagreements ultimately split the mursaat in two with many of the elders leaving their zealous brethren behind instead of taking part in further atrocities and manipulations.

When the mursaat learned of the dragon prophet Glint's Flameseeker Prophecies which foretold their race's doom at the hands of the titans, they began searching for a way to prevent the prophecy from coming true. In order to ensure their survival, the mursaat of Janthir needed to keep the Door of Komalie of the Ring of Fire islands, which prevented the titans from entering Tyria, powered up with soul batteries and required magically potent souls for it. When the exiled human Saul D'Alessio stumbled into the mursaat city of Bava Nisos and viewed them as gods, the mursaat realized they had found the means to enact their plans. It was Lazarus who chose Saul to form a religious cult of the Unseen Ones in an effort to rule Kryta as puppets of the mursaat.

Conflict in Kryta

Lazarus and his fellow mursaat kidnap Saul D'Alessio.

Encouraged by the mursaat, Saul returned to his homeland of Kryta as a changed man and founded the White Mantle cult to worship these seemingly benevolent Unseen Ones. In time the cult grew into the protectors of Kryta who defended the kingdom against the invading charr when King Jadon had fled from the Krytan capital of Lion's Arch and left the kingdom leaderless. Saul and his missionaries spread the Unseen Ones' gospel beyond Kryta, and Saul personally traveled to the remote community of Gavril in Janthir to recruit the humans there to his cult.

Lazarus, along with his fellow mursaat Optimus Caliph and Mercia the Smug, offered assistance to Saul's forces during the battle against the charr by decimating the charr forces when Saul prayed for his gods to help his outnumbered forces. However, the mursaat's assistance came with a price: they turned on Saul's followers and killed those they deemed unworthy of seeing them, sparing only the most zealous. Realizing Saul's changed attitude at the sight of the massacre and to keep him from telling the Krytan population what he had seen, the mursaat took him with them to a faraway location.

The White Mantle, now under the leadership of Confessor Dorian, turned into a religious cult of fanatics who carried out the will of their Unseen gods, using the Eye of Janthir to locate Chosen, people identified as having magical potential, who would be taken to be sacrificed upon the Bloodstone of Bloodstone Fen and the other located bloodstones across Tyria to power up the soul batteries and to keep the Door of Komalie closed. The mursaat had thus accomplished two tasks: they had managed to keep their race safe from the titans, and they now ruled the Krytan population via their White Mantle puppets. However, a rebel group known as the Shining Blade discovered the true nature of the White Mantle and the Unseen Ones and brought the truth of their atrocities to light by 1072 AE with the help of a group of heroes, ultimately leading to the fall of the White Mantle and the temporary release of the titans which destroyed many mursaat on Tyria as Glint had foreseen.

Lazarus had gone into hiding during the titans' rampage and survived for years, however, by splitting his soul into multiple aspects which he had hidden within unknowing White Mantle followers. In the final stages of the Krytan Civil War, Lazarus decided to return from the shadows and reclaim these aspects, although the acts led to the deaths of the aspects' human hosts. The last remaining host, Justiciar Naveed, realized the truth of Lazarus's "gift" and sought help from a Tyrian hero and the asura Glayvin to remove the aspect, only for the attempt to fail. However, the trio discovered that the attempted removal had poisoned the aspect within Naveed; they decided to lure Lazarus to Naveed so they could transfer the corrupted aspect to the mursaat and severely weaken Lazarus. As the justiciar had predicted, Lazarus did arrive to claim the last aspect, which led to Naveed's death. The mursaat realized the change in the affected aspect too late, however, and swore to make countless human generations pay for what had been done to him, before he disappeared from sight.

Many believed that Lazarus was killed along the rest of his kind during the Krytan Civil War, but he had actually survived, albeit severely weakened due to his power being turned against him. He went into hiding to recuperate but, having learned from his previous actions, he decided to split his aspects into artifacts rather than living hosts. Once the splitting was complete and the artifacts had been scattered throughout the Maguuma Jungle and sites sacred to the White Mantle, Lazarus fell into a slumber in an unknown, remote location. His surviving White Mantle followers fled deep into the Heart of Maguuma to regroup and bide their time from 1079 AE onwards.

Living World Season 3

Stronghold of the Faithful

Lazarus impaled by the Shining Blade.

As time passed, more and more White Mantle began doubting the mursaat's cause although the primary objective of the White Mantle was to revive Lazarus. High Inquisitor Xera left her fellow cultists to search for Lazarus's refuge while White Mantle spies continued searching for and gathering the artifacts containing the mursaat's dormant aspects. Xera found what she had been looking for and returned to the Stronghold of the Faithful, and the cult researched the Bloodstone in Bloodstone Fen to use its power in the mursaat's resurrection. Following Confessor Esthel's demise in 1325 AE, the White Mantle fractured into two factions: those following the new Confessor Caudecus's plans to overtake Kryta, and those following Xera's plans to use the Maguuma Bloodstone to revive and empower Lazarus, whom they viewed as their true leader, behind Caudecus's back.

Out of the Shadows

Lazarus was seemingly revived in 1329 AE, just before a group of adventurers raided the White Mantle's Stronghold of the Faithful and defeated Xera who boasted about her mursaat's impending return. Shortly afterwards, the Maguuma Bloodstone exploded, and Lazarus absorbed much of its power. He revealed himself when the Pact Commander's party was fighting against Caudecus's forces. He ousted Caudecus, who had refused to submit to him, as a heretic and killed many of the Confessor's followers, thus furthering the splintering of the White Mantle before disappearing once more.

Rising Flames

Lazarus showed up some time after in Tarir, the Forgotten City to help the Pact Commander and the Luminate defend Glint's recently hatched child, Aurene, against invading Destroyers. After the battle, Lazarus made his intentions known: he claimed to have learned from the mursaat's past mistakes and wished to align himself with the Commander, believing that the two of them together, along with Lazarus's White Mantle faction, could be a great force against the Elder Dragons. Although the Commander's party was skeptical about Lazarus's earnestness given the mursaat's past deeds, Marjory Delaqua volunteered to accompany Lazarus to find out whether he was truly being genuine or not. Lazarus accepted Marjory's terms and left Tarir with her.

The Head of the Snake

After the Pact Commander eliminated Confessor Caudecus and investigated his personal quarters in the manor, it was revealed that Caudecus had held on to an aspect required to revive Lazarus and given Xera a fake artifact to keep her from resurrecting the last mursaat. The Commander realized that the current version of Lazarus whom Marjory had been accompanying was fake, and that the real Lazarus was still out there though it was unknown at the time whether Lazarus had revived during Xera's attempts or remained in his five aspect artifacts.

Flashpoint

After the illusion he was under was dispelled by the joint efforts of the Commander, Kasmeer Meade and Taimi, the mursaat imposter's true identity turned out to be none other than Balthazar, the God of War and Fire. Having betrayed his White Mantle followers and taken on mercenary armies, the exposed god stole Taimi's device designed to simultaneously kill the Elder Dragons Primordus and Jormag and retreated to Draconis Mons to use it on Primordus. In the heart of the volcano before Primordus, he joined into the energy trails linking Primordus and Jormag and began absorbing their magic, as he had done to the Maguuma Bloodstone, in an attempt to slay the two Elder Dragons and take their power. However, his schemes were foiled by the Commander and Taimi, and he vanished once Taimi's device had exploded.

One Path Ends

The real Lazarus remained out there, however. Having thought Lazarus revived, the White Mantle had scattered the five artifacts they held across Tyria before they were imprisoned by Balthazar. Elsewhere, the Eye of Janthir had left the Bastion of the Penitent following the death of the mursaat's prisoner Saul D'Alessio whom it had been overseeing. With its latest task completed, the Eye went out to search for its remaining mursaat masters. As such, it was tracking down and collecting the aspects of Lazarus. Using this information to their advantage, the Shining Blade retrieved the aspects instead, including the one that had been in Caudecus's possession preventing Lazarus's earlier revival.

The final aspect, housed within a book, was still held by Balthazar who had taken it to Abaddon's Reliquary in Orr. The Eye of Janthir, and in turn the Pact Commander and Exemplar Kerida, entered Abaddon's Reliquary and recovered the final aspect, reviving Lazarus in 1330 AE. Confronted, Lazarus revealed Kerida to truly be Livia, a human necromancer loyal to the Shining Blade from the time of the Krytan Civil War, and swore once more his vengeance against humanity. However, he did not survive the battle, his five aspects slain by the Commander and Livia, and himself slain by The Shining Blade, a powerful magical artifact of Seer origins. With Lazarus's death, the Eye of Janthir disintegrated, confirming that the last of its masters, the mursaat, were truly dead.

Legacy

Secrets of the Obscure

Unbeknownst to most people, Lazarus had not been the last mursaat on Tyria. Mabon, an atoning mursaat member of the secretive Wizard's Court, had stayed out of the Eye of Janthir's reach within the magically warded Wizard's Tower, so the Eye had been unable to locate him. While exploring the tower, the Pact Commander ran into Livia who revealed that she was also a member of the Astral Ward working alongside the Wizard's Court to defend Tyria from extraplanar threats. She explained that she had been aware of Mabon's existence during the hunt for Lazarus and that Mabon had been just as worried about Lazarus's return as she had been as the two mursaat had known one another during the war between the mursaat and the Seers. Livia pointed out that Kryta would be safe as neither Lazarus nor the White Mantle were able to threaten anyone again. Lazarus's defeat was immortalized in both a statue and a descriptive plaque in the Museum of Curiosities found in the wizards' floating domain of Amnytas.

Janthir Wilds

Story involvement

Living World Season 3

• Episode 1: Out of the Shadows
  • Confessor's Stronghold
• Episode 2: Rising Flames
  • Dragon Vigil
• Episode 5: Flashpoint
  • Taimi's Pet Project
• Episode 6: One Path Ends
  • The Last Chance

Combat abilities

During Taimi's Pet Project

Effects

•  Protective Illusion

Skills

• Agony Projection
•   Fire Strike - Strike your foe with flame.
•   Ring of Fire Damage nearby foes with a ring of fire, burning foes that pass through it.
•   Flame Wall - Burn foes with a wall of flame at the target location.
• Rain of Fire - Multiple small AoE strikes.

During The Last Chance

Abilities

Behavior

• Causes  Ancient Rage to players for ten seconds upon reducing Lazarus's health to nearly zero

Effects

•  Impaled - The exemplar's plan worked! Stabbing the aspect has corrupted his resurrection. The blade is now impaled through Lazarus's body. He looks wracked with pain.
•  Sudden Mortality - Lazarus is overwhelmed with pain, leaving him especially vulnerable to attack.

Skills

• Spectral Agony - A channeled AoE across most of the room that applies  Spectral Agony
• Necrotic Orbs - A cone-shaped spray of green orbs in a wave like pattern.
• Stormfront - Multiple lightning strikes in random locations across the entire room.
• Rain of Agony - Small arcing orbs raining down at random locations.

Stolen skills

Gallery

• 

  Concept art by Naomi Baker.

• 

  Render by Marcus Jackson.

• 

  Balthazar's illusion failing.

Related achievements

• One Path Ends: A Quick Death — Achieve victory within nine minutes of starting the final battle. (1)
• One Path Ends: Dodger Danger — Succeed without taking damage from lightning. (1)

Notes

• Studio Audio Director Drew Cady added the "muted mask" sound to Lazarus's voice for The Last Chance, which has subsequently been used for all mursaat voices since.

Trivia

• The "Lazarus" imposter is voiced by Peter Jessop. The real Lazarus encountered in The Last Chance is voiced by Rick Wasserman.
• During his revival, "Lazarus" mentions the White Mantle being in "a dire state." This is a reference to his name in the first Guild Wars, "Lazarus the Dire."
• Lazarus's name is probably a reference to the Biblical figure Lazarus of Bethany, who was raised from death by Jesus after being dead for four days.
• Lazarus splitting his soul into aspects is reminiscent of liches, particularly the Dungeons & Dragons variant which popularized the concept of an undead sorcerer who has split his soul into multiple soul artifacts (often called soul gem or phylactery) which anchor the lich's soul to the material world. If the corporeal body of the lich is killed, their soul will exist in spirit to resurrect themself with the help of the soul artifacts; the only way to permanently kill the lich is to destroy all the artifacts. The concept has existed earlier in myths and fairytales such as Koschei the Deathless of Russian folklore who made himself immortal by hiding "his death" inside nested objects.

See also

The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Lazarus the Dire.

• Aspect of Lazarus
• Illusory Lazarus

Associated items

• Mini Lazarus