!!!!!
I think all of this actually supports the idea that Ward became Yor ever more!
Malphur saying that we assume. Apparently Ward was a mentor and father figure to Malphur. Bear with me for a second, accept the premise that the two men refers to the "before" and "after" of Jared Ward/Dredgen Yor.
About Ward:
This on the the first Thorn ghost fragment card:
Right right okay now stick with me here
Ward gives The Last Word to Malphur seemingly as a child
Why unfortunately? Because of what it was used for the last time it was held...
Back to the Rose card:
At this point, between all the Thorn and The Last Word cards, there has actually been no mention whatsoever of Jaren Ward in connection with Rose/Thorn. But then there's the final card about Thorn ("The Bloom") you mentioned which is raw transcript, with no names attatched to each line, just "unidentified 1, 2, and 3" and timestamps, of an interrogation. It's
worth reading for sure, but here's what stood out to me. Based on the context, it seems like Unidentified 2 is obviously the wielder of Thorn. Unidentified 1 is doing the interrogation, and 3 just has a single line, supporting 1. It's all about u.1 questioning u.2.
Check this shit out:
That's what's left of Jaren Ward talking. His light and his Rose corrupted by anger.
Ward gave The Last Word, after it was granted its name, to Malphur, and then got himself a new weapon, Rose- one maybe even more powerful, this one with magic to it, and Darkness, from the Hive. He wielded it with honor, but the anger was too much and his light began to fade. As he gave in to the Darkness, he gave one last thought to how people would remember him as Jaren Ward- a beacon of hope. And then.
Dredgen Yor killed Jaren Ward with Thorn, in exactly the same way Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker.
Whatever path it was that led them to Dwindler's Ridge, Shin Malphur confronted his former mentor, what was left of his "third father," Dredgen Yor.
He held the gun he had once given him steady in his hands and repeated back the words that had made it famous throughout the solar system decades before.
That was the last, unfortunate time Malphur held The Last Word. And Thorn was lost to the man, "once a hero," that had seen it, in now-distant memory, as a Rose.
That's how we got them.
fuck.