Greetings, good people of Tyria! I'm Erin Amschlinger of ArenaNet's Narrative team. As part of our series on the playable species of Guild Wars 3™, we're going deep on a species whose outsized presence in our announcement trailer at Summer Game Fest may have caught your notice: Tyria's much beloved bearkin, the kodan.
While longtime Guild Wars 2® players may be well acquainted with their headstrong forebears on the isles of Janthir, the kodan of the Orrian golden age are a unique case in the history of the species—a population called south to the wilds of Orr, prompting a resurgence of belief in an otherwise faithless people. As you set paw onto Orrian soil, you too shall begin your own journey. One that's sure to be retold by the fireside.
But before you set off to make history, you'd best be acquainted with your own.
Heeding the Voice or Embracing the Silence
Originating in the Far Shiverpeaks, the kodan are, broadly speaking, a culture defined by their faith. Kodan worship Koda the Creator, a deity they believe to be the sole fashioner of Tyria and all the natural and magical life that inhabits it. Devoting the whole of their civilizational effort in service of this creator, the kodan are among the most capable fighters on Tyria: ferocious, intelligent, and driven by unshakable conviction.
Per their belief, a direct connection exists between Koda and a blessed few among his tribes of followers, called Voices—chosen tributes attuned to the mind, thoughts, and will of their creator. Guided by these leaders, the kodan interpret the will of their god as a mission for the whole of their people: the duty to watch over all of Tyria and foster an enduring balance in the natural harmonies of the world.
This connection is an almost universal feature of kodan settlements across Tyria, with one notable exception: the bearkin of the isles of Janthir. Featured prominently in Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds™, the kodan of Janthir were brought to those fabled lands as a result of a notorious Voice who abandoned her calling and rejected Koda. This population of kodan would endure for centuries, carving out a new way of life unburdened by the faith that defined the contemporaries they left behind.
But as any kodan who has heard it themselves can tell you, the call of their god is powerful and compelling. Even—and perhaps especially—among those who refuse to listen to it.
A Stirring, a Flash, and a Long Journey
Echoing across Janthir, the call went mostly unheard by the kodan who dwelled there, save for a chosen few. Steeped in a culture that roundly rejected the will of Koda and was fearful of ostracization, those who experienced this sudden and jarring renewed connection largely kept it to themselves, whispering of it only behind closed doors with those who had felt it too: an inexplicable pull toward a far-flung and mythic land called Orr. A sense that some duty awaited them there.
Many who felt this stirring refused to believe it was real at all until the motions of the world confirmed it for them, with news of a great calamity erupting in Orr's Tughra Basin. The disaster was so mythic in scale that it prompted the renewed faithful among the Janthir kodan to publicly attest to their experience, despite the risk. Koda's will was not only real, they claimed, but clearly apparent: a call to the faithless of Janthir to renew their conviction in service of the natural balance of the world, needed nowhere more than the storied lands of Orr.
This proved to be the catalyst for yet another schism among the bearkin. Refusing to let their divine call to action go unanswered, those who heard Koda's beckon began a second migration, flanked by those inspired to follow. These chosen few formed the first seeds of kodan settlement in Orr—your forebears as a kodan player in Guild Wars 3.
The Orrian Kodan and the Vael
The first of the southbound kodan reached Orr over a hundred years before the start of Guild Wars 3. They felt an immediate conviction that they had arrived at their destination; they sensed a land ailing, the way one smells sickness in a loved one long before it's spoken of. A palpable pain radiating from the natural-magical world. But what was its cause?
As the kodan continued their exploration of the region, the environment exuded something else entirely: beauty. Surrounded by the majesties of the Vael—the range of breathtaking magical creatures that lived in Orr—the arriving kodan were certain that they had interpreted Koda's call correctly and that his will was to see this land healed and protected. This certainty prompted the founding of a permanent settlement in northwestern Orr.
The Orrian kodan felt an immediate kinship with the Vaelwardens, still young in their mission to protect the Vael's magical creatures, but that sense of fraternity was not immediately returned. Fresh off their originating tragedy and highly insular, the order was not trusting of outsiders and refused to open their ranks to the kodan—or anybody else—for many years.
Though early friction and clashes led some among the kodan to doubt the call that brought them to Orr, the ethos they shared with the Vaelwardens would, over time, grow into one of the Order of the Vael's deepest and most enduring alliances.
The Orrian Kodan of Today
A century deep into their grand experiment to reclaim their connection to Koda, the Orrian kodan find themselves at a fork in their path. The Vaelwardens' mission is faltering. The conviction that carried their forebears south is dwindling with each passing generation. And all the while, the world around them is rapidly changing, the natural balance they were called to protect crushed beneath the wheels of progress.
So, when the long-insular Order of the Vael at last opened its ranks and began to recruit, the kodan were—of course—among the first to answer. As a kodan player, you are one of them: swearing yourself to the Vaelwarden banner as your own interpretation of Koda's will. Your forebears came to this land to carry out their divinely appointed duty as Tyria's guardians; devoting your life to the order is your way of picking up their torch. How you fulfill your duty to the guild is as unique as the wardens who make up its ranks.
And here we find ourselves. As one attuned to nature, you know well that change is the only constant. The Orr of today is not the Orr of your forebears. Though many kodan have long kept to their first and only major settlement, a whole world awaits beyond its bounds—a bustling intersection of old and new, progress and tradition, where guilds abound and a mosaic of ideologies, species, and histories collide. Many a bearkin before you has left the confines of the northwest for reasons economic, spiritual, or personal.
Whatever your own beliefs, your dedication as a kodan of the Order of the Vael comes first: protect the spirits and the lands they call home. Everything else is secondary. But be wise—the company you keep has a way of keeping you.
Like Orr itself, you stand at the meeting place of history and possibility.
Go forth, cub. Orr awaits.