Guild Wars 2

Hey, so was minding my own business in Orr, when I had a revelation. There are literally no Risen Sylvari, no Branded Sylvari, nor icebrood. So I came to wonder. Can Sylvari even turn into the servants of the dragons? Or is there something key that I’m missing. If they do have this immunity, doesn’t that kind of make them the perfect weapon against the dragons? Eh, just speculating.

Sylvari are immune to being turned into dragon minions, yes—the corruption just kills them off instead (nobody knows why yet). And it does make them ideal for high-risk missions because they can’t be turned and come back for everyone else or filter information to the enemy. You see this kind of idea in the personal story with the Pale Reavers.

The other side of the coin is that the more the sylvari get thrown at the dragons because they can’t be turned, the more fear, anguish, horror they experience and share with the dream. thereby they may not be corrupting the individual but they are actually helping to corrupt the source of the individuals wich would eventually produce a corrupted race that reproduces independantlly, if it’s not managed carefully.

It’s part of why you see a disproportionate amount of Sylvari fighting on the front lines— they can’t be turned against their comrades if they die.

Well they don’t have traditional skin. They are made of planty stuff. Which is the jist of what they said in my personal story. I know there are a few cases of corrupted tree stumps and the such in PvE but I’ll chalk that up to game developers being human and not adhereing to a strict set of guidelines regarding what can and can’t be corrupted. I also like to believe that because they Sylvari are so religiously devout to follow Ventari’s Tablet, The Dream, and The Mother that they are too wholesome spiritually to be corrupted by the dragons tools of fear.

They’re the most epic Mary Sues in Guild Wars history.

Dragon corruption is largely physical, though. Joarmag uses spiritual corruption with the Sons of Svanir (and the original Svanir), but his Icebrood and Zhaitan’s minions are the result of what is basically a disease working into someone’s system.

We really know very little about Sylvari biology so it’s hard to say why exactly they’re immune. Sylvari themselves have ranging ideas from “it’s because we were made to fight the dragons!!” to “it’s just because we’re too new to the world, give them time to figure us out and they’ll corrupt us too”.

There is no proof that it is a disease at all.

It looks nothing like it in Jormag’s case.

It’s not a literal disease, but I mean that it’s something invasive to the physical body that causes damage (if you take the way Icebrood’s bodies changed to be damage, of if we reference Hekja/that event in the Straits the way turning into a risen might speed up the corpse rotting in early stages)/ailment/apparent mental degradation. You could compare it to chemical poisoning too. :|a That would probably be closer from a mutative perspective.

It doesn’t look invasive either.

Jormag’s corruption covers their bodies in corrupted ice. Starting with an arm there or a leg there as with the still-recognizable Sons of Svanir, and ends with a full transformation into “true” Icebrood. If you look at the back of an Icebrood Colossus you can actually spot a human (well, norn) spinal cord. Creepy.

Dragon corruption looks pretty invasive to me, with the way it involuntarily changes the physical and mental state of an individual (as we see in HotW (and an early event in Dredgehaunt Cliffs) not all who become corrupted did so willingly—those who are already corrupted can forcefully spread it to them). And Icebrood are simply covered in early stages, but it’s noted that older ones are frozen up the whole way through, so it is working its way into their actual bodies and changing that too.

Colossus are very change, I’m not sure if they’re an example of very old icebrood or if Jormag can actually create minion like Primordus does.

As mentioned, you can see a spinal cord in them. You can also glimpse a norn skull in them.

I know. What I meant is: did Jormag create a minion around the remains of something long-dead, did the flesh somehow actually decompose inside (and if so why is it no longer shaped like the framework would have started forming as), or is late stages of his corruption something that actively changes just not the composition of those corrupted, but their entire structure as well? And as such, are most of the Icebrood we see actually very young (Norn presumably are, but you also find Icebrood elementals, Kodan, wolves who maintain their general structure too. Goliaths are also still very Norn-shaped)?

Apart from the huge “head”, yes. They got arms and legs that still look fleshy. As in they were encased in corrupted ice.