Guild Wars 2

Some of the major ‘selling points’ Anet has been throwing about the plot of Heart of Thorns is how sylvari deal with the fact that they’re dragon minions, etc. etc.

But there’s a few things I just don’t get. Contradictions in the storytelling, if you will – or at least that’s how I’m seeing them – which makes me feel like Anet warped and ignored everything else about their lore to tell the story of ‘a player race comes from the bad guy’ which is an overused (and oft poorly done, IMO) trope.

I’ll largely be quoting The Mordrem Guard news post and "
The Mordrem Guard on Points of Interest: A Summary":https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-mordrem-guard-on-points-of-interest-a-summary/ since they’re most recent.

Issue 1: Mordremoth’s “corruption”

Nothing to really quote, but it stems from how Mordremoth creates new mordrem, and how sylvari are born – a wide variety of things but one good source is the Blighting Tree event chain in Verdant Brink from BWE2. With every Elder Dragon, there’s a very clear case of corruption – even Primordus’ minions are just corrupted rock and lava given a semblance of life (pulse-less and mindless without a champion though they be).

Mordrem, however, appear to “grow” from the treess. There is no uncorrupted state. Corpses and living creatures are merely used as templates (not too dissimilar from destroyers which also mimic living beings in shape). But effectively, the mordrem don’t seem to be coming from some uncorrupted state (unlike destroyers).

This counteracts EVERYTHING we’ve seen about dragon minions and Elder Dragons – that they corrupt living, dead, and land and destroy what they don’t twist, but they never create; never any case of e.g., sexual reproduction… Until Mordremoth.

Which makes Mordremoth an odd-ball of the group. And for no apparent reason…

1.5. Sylvari don’t act like dragon minions

Those who know me, this is a dead horse to beat but still a point I feel like bringing up. Sylvari simply don’t function like dragon minions.

Aside from the above point of “not corrupted from anything”, there’s the lack of a hive mind (people say the Dream – but as talked about, the Dream actually acts as a barrier and Killeen in Ghosts of Ascalon outright denies it being a hive mind or group consciousness – and I think the sylvari know what they’re about), there’s how they don’t consume magic – at all – despite mordrem doing such as well as standard risen – and we even see icebrood collecting magical artifacts. And that’s not to touch the more ambiguous aspects of dragon minions like nigh mindlessness sans champions (is every sylvari and mordrem guard a champion? I doubt it!).

2. The Sylvari Hate

Because sylvari are susceptible to becoming Mordrem Guard, Leah said that they encounter heightened prejudice and mistrust, and playing through the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ story as a sylvari character will have an impact on the overall experience.

Okay, so they’re dragon minions… but still. How would people find out? The only people who know this are 1) Caithe, the PC, and the Biconics, 2) Supposedly Scarlet, but she’s dead and not talking, 3) Mordrem.

“But wait,” you say, “the sylvari turned against the Pact and there are survivors! They know!”

Eh… not quite. The sylvari who survive know due to hearing the call… but how can they trust the call is because they’re freed dragon minions?

And to the non-sylvari – well, how can they be so certain that sylvari were born dragon minions? Let’s face it, sylvari are plants, and Mordremoth is a dragon that specializes in corrupting plants (at face value). So it makes sense for Mordremoth to be able to corrupt sylvari – corrupting plants is his thing (again, at face value; see point 1).

And Mordrem Guard spouting out that sylvari are dragon minions… again, who would trust what they say? Risen practically did the same thing over and over again throughout Orr and beyond! Icebrood and Sons of Svanir practically do the same thing as well. This isn’t new, this isn’t unique.

So why is everyone in Tyria making such a big deal out of corrupted beings? It’s been happening for the past 200 years.

Or will everyone know sylvari were born dragon minions because of the same reason everyone suddenly knew the name Mordremoth and the term mordrem? Aka, no explanation at all – it just bloody happened. And Anet was shamed, admitting it was a bad move.

3. Facing horror of fighting old comrades turned mordrem

These dragon minions present a personal threat to the remnants of the Pac

[…]

Although they’ve undergone physical changes to make themselves hardier and larger, Mordrem Guard maintain some aspects of their previous identity; members of the Pact may experience the horror of recognizing their former comrades among Mordremoth’s forces.

Again, so what? This is not new.

This is the Pact we’re talking about. They’re the veterans of Orr, where as that very article states their dead companions came back as dragon minions. With mordrem, they might be fighitng their old comrades – or more often miniosn that copy the appearance and potentially knowledge of their old comrades… but hours and days after the old comrade’s death (except in case of sylvari).

But this was true in Orr too. And even worse in Orr, they could be fighting former comrades SECONDS after said comrades’ deaths (as shown in both Edge of Destiny and Sea of Sorrows, as well as some story instances and events, corpses can turn into risen fast – before hitting the ground, even).

So why is this such an experience of horror? Only the greenhorns of the Pact would really see such as an ‘experience of horror.’ Yet it seems even Orrian veterans do.

So again, this feels like the plot is making a huge deal out of old stuff or things that rightfully they shouldn’t know.

So can someone explain to me why old situations are suddenly “omg drama!” and why the sylvari and Mordremoth are black sheep amongst dragons and their minions? Because as it stands, this entire plot we’re being told feels like “we did it cuz its cool, yo, forget consistency!”

And while it’s Anet’s story and they can do what they want with it without anyone’s say… that won’t make it a good story… In the end, only time will tell if it’s any good.

-puts on flame-resistant coat-

Well one thing that can be said is that with zhaitan , it corrupted a dead person, but with mordremoth it corrupsa living one which is a huge difference. Also the physical changes are optional (not sure), unlike zhaitan. So I think it will not be hate but more paranoia: any sylvari can at any moment become a mordrem minion without anybody knowing.

Also wouldn’t it be logical for an elder dragon to create instead of corrupt? Elder dragons are not dumb, so learning from the mistakes of zhaitan is not illogical. One of the things the pact did was negating the ability to corrupt (with the krait orb and destroying the ship full of corpses).

I don’t see any problem.

About sylvari: there IS a hive sense, like you already said discussed the dream, but the pale tree sylvari just seperated from the mordrem part with their own little “island”. They are still in the system, but got a barrier between them and mordrem.

Dragon minions don’t collect magical artifacts for their own, they are collecting them for their dragon master. The dragon does consume magic, not the minions. Mordrem don’t need to collect something like that, cause mordremoth is able to drain the magical lines of the world with his roots.

About corruption, how about that: mordremoth is corrupting existing plants to minions, which will produce minions for him.

Sorry OP, I don’t get you at all. First, you’re acting like we know everything there is to know about dragons. We really don’t.

However, if any dragon is going to be able to make things live, wouldn’t it be the jungle dragon. The dragon of life. I mean Zhaitan was the undead dragon. He corrupted corpses.

But many of these dragons have dragon bosses. The destroyers aren’t corrupted anything as far as I know. I get more the impression they were forged, or created out of the fire.

As for the way Sylvari act, well they act like they were taught to act, in spite of their apparently true nature. But as they get closer and closer to Modremoth and further and further from the Pale Tree, her influence is less and the dragon’s is more.

I just don’t see what you don’t get.

I think part of the issue here is we are dealing with too many unknowns, or things that we’ve interpreted.

It’s an annoying position to be in, especially with the precedent set with how poorly Mordremoth was introduced, but the writing team haven’t seen fit to include details on what ties the Elder Dragons together, how they are different, or even what they are trying to accomplish (beyond consuming magic and controlling Tyria).

We could just be caught in the middle of an emerging battle between the elder dragons looking for ultimate control of Tyria, or we may have created a serious imbalance in the fundamental structure of Tyrian magic by killing Zhaitan, both are guesses based on cut-scenes and the few scant details we actually have of the over-arching plot here.

OP I think you’re right in that there should be no horror/surprise in battling former comrades. The pact has been seen that before, but did the assault fleet consist of more than just pact soldiers this time?

Also regarding details from the books, I’m concerned that these are either being ignored by the current team, or at least severely undervalued, particularly with the World timeline. I found the dialog in LS2 whilst gathering leaders for the summit particularly strange for the norn and charr, which basically were like:
PC: “We need your help fighting the newly awoken dragon!”
Norn: “Hold up there son, we’ve got our own troubles, we’ve been fighting Jormag and the Sons of Svanir (for over 150 years), we need you and your friend to push them back before we can spare any troops”
Charr: "Hold up there son, we’ve got our own troubles, we’ve been fighting these ghosts (for over 250 years), we need you and your friend to go find the pieces of the crown we’ve left lying around in our controlled territory before we can possibly do anything else "

sigh

I too am disappointed by the points used to promote HoT, but eager to see what we find out on release. I’m hoping that the writers have been able to build much more detail into the world, rather than just using ones PC as a fountain of previously unknown lore.

Thing we maybe jumping to a few conclusions here.

Like there is nothing that suggests “corruption” works the same way between dragons. In fact I’d say it doesnt really seem to be the case. Like Zaithan corrupts the dead, while kralkatorrik corrupted the living. Seems more like each dragon does its thing to corrupt and create minions. Modremoth being the dragon of nature and by extension life it seems to like it make sense it would birth its minions. As for whats actually being corrupted, it may as well be nature itself. Its not like trees in a untouch, natural state would birth sylvari or other modrem creates. That they’re now doing this may very well be the result of the dragon corruption.

Now why dont they all serve him? well dragon influence doesnt seem to be absolute, you need to kinda let that influence in before it takes over. That how it was described in the latest POI but it isnt completely new either.
In: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragonspawn it is stated that: His power infused them, tempted them. which against seems to indicate that dragon corruption is kinda like the dark side. Its alluring and it may be hard to avoid it but ultimately you need to be the one to accept it.

Now you have a variety of lifeforms. With basic life forms like animals and husks they probably dont have enough reasoning to refuse the temptation while high life forms like the sylvari possess the reason necessary to refuse. So its not like Sylvari are dragon minions that dont behave like dragon minions but rather they’re just not imprinted yet.

as for how does everyone know that the sylvari are dragon minions, it may not have happened on screen but people talk. I mean consider you’re in a fleet and suddenly a large number of a certain group of people start sabotaging everything. Naturally you’ll distrust even the one who didnt take part in the sabotage but who belong to that group. Also naturally I’d imagine is some of those people will try to explain whats going and its not the kind of situation you can talk yourself out of by lieing. (ohh those guys, they were just having a bad day you know, they just went balastic, all 100k of them, there is really nothing more to it, all other Slyvari are perfectly trust worthy) it just wouldn’t work.

Now is everyone freaking out… well like you said other dragons corrupted differently, Branded required direct dragon action, same with the icebrood. Modremoth seems to be the only one who can corrupt remotely so to speak. It seems to have a sort of telepathic hive mind. Non sylvari hear it as screeching and other animalistic noises but the slyvari hear it and understand it. Essentially whats understandably freaky is a slyvari might turn at anytime and you’d only realize once their dagger as a few inches embedded in you… if thats not nerve wrecking not sure what is.

well fighting family and friends is never fun but once again its different in that in other cases we had closure so to speak… my friend died before being bought back to life and i have to fight him. My friend got engulfed in crystal before he turning against me. In each case you’re seeing them fall and you know they’re lost before you need to raise your arms against them. No such luck with turned slyvari, its like if your best friend suddenly tries to kill you, it takes a while before you can process that and I can see it as a little more freaky than what we had before.

None of the story related to the dragons (since launch at least) has been that great IMO, so I’ve just become sort of numb to it.
None of them feel distinct enough, yet none of them really feel powerful enough either, so I’m just waiting for the plot to run its course (which will admittedly take forever at this rate); I have little faith in what comes after, but at least there’s potential at that point.

Tim.6450:

Well one thing that can be said is that with zhaitan , it corrupted a dead person, but with mordremoth it corrupsa living one which is a huge difference. Also the physical changes are optional (not sure), unlike zhaitan. So I think it will not be hate but more paranoia: any sylvari can at any moment become a mordrem minion without anybody knowing.

1) Zhaitan did corrupt the living – see Corporal Kellach (human PS), Necromancer Rissa (charr PS), and the Sparkfly Fen heart Help Ayomichi slow the spread of Risen corruption – furthermore, throughout Orr, Bloodtide Coast, Sparkfly Fen, and the last two chapters of the personal story (Greatest Fear and Orr), we learn that Zhaitan corrupts not just corpses and the living, but plants, the land, air, and water as well.

2) Mordremoth does not corrupt the living. He has been stated to use the dead and the living as templates. Basically, Mordremoth and the mordrem are seeing other individuals and using them as models for sculptures made out of plants that are other mordrem.

3) According to the articles, the physical change is not optional. Or so the article implies. It’s a matter of which sylvari become Mordrem Guards, not which sylvari work for Mordremoth.

Tim.6450:

Also wouldn’t it be logical for an elder dragon to create instead of corrupt? Elder dragons are not dumb, so learning from the mistakes of zhaitan is not illogical. One of the things the pact did was negating the ability to corrupt (with the krait orb and destroying the ship full of corpses).

Sure it’d be logical, but from the earliest lore of the Elder Dragons from the Movement of the World up until Mordremoth’s creation of mordrem, corrupting and twisting and destroying the rest is the pure foundation of Elder Dragon lore.

Besides Mordremoth, no Elder Dragon creates in the sense of not changing material a into material b.

Kodama.6453:

About sylvari: there IS a hive sense, like you already said discussed the dream, but the pale tree sylvari just seperated from the mordrem part with their own little “island”. They are still in the system, but got a barrier between them and mordrem.

Except that the Dream is not used by other “Pale Trees”. Malyck outright states he has no clue what the Dream or Nightmare is. So this is something unique to the Pale Tree and the Pale Tree alone.

The Dream is less a hive sense and more of a database by its explanation. It receives information, but only gives to ‘new products’ – never old, which hive minds would be doing.

Besides, I’m going to take the sylvari’s words that it isn’t a hive mind over player’s interpretations and claims that it is.

Kodama.6453:

The dragon does consume magic, not the minions. Mordrem don’t need to collect something like that, cause mordremoth is able to drain the magical lines of the world with his roots.

This is false. If you read the dialogue of the links, or watch videos of those story steps, you’d know this is false. The mere presence of risen – standard risen not even Mouths of Zhaitan – reduces the ambient magic in the area.

While Mordremoth does have his own tendrils sapping leyline (and formerly waypoint) magic, the mordrem during The Concordia Incident are stated to have drained the magical artifacts the Priory were protecting of their magic. They even assault another Priory caravan in the Iron Marches.

Kodama.6453:

About corruption, how about that: mordremoth is corrupting existing plants to minions, which will produce minions for him.

But the minions are growing on trees. The sylvari are literally described as the fruits of the trees – so too would the mordrem.

That’s growing, not corrupting.

I’ll respond to the others in turn later. Don’t have time now.

About the growing vs corrupting:

I think it’s more that Mordremoth corrupts a plant that then bears corrupted fruit, in this case minions. Remember, a Destroyer Queen was able to lay eggs that became more destroyers (if you study the Skritt in Harathi, you encounter this in your PS). The theory was that she had the eggs ready at the time she became corrupted.

I don’t think it’s a stretch for Mordremoth to be able to turn plants from normal plantiness to generators of poisons and toxins, as it were, that are able to produce fruit to his desired pattern rather than what regular nature would have made. He’s not creating life, he’s tweaking it.

I think your logic falls down when you look at Primordus – you say that he corrupts lava and rocks but don’t believe that Mordremoth isn’t corrupting vegetation.

Eg. Primordus manipulates a lava pool to spawn Destroyers (as we have seen), Mordremoth corrupts a plant to spawn Mordrem.

We also don’t know that Mordremoth is physically attached to every one of his vines.

Plants also grow from the decomposing waste of other living things (the corruption being the form and type of plant).

All the dragons seem to like creating minions of the shape of living things (this is likely so the devs can use models but lets ignore that), there is no reason lava minions should look like crabs, harpies and trolls but the dragons seem to like it and I guess Primordus has absorbed these creatures at some point to pump out minions of that form (much like Mord is doing with corpses of living things described).

While Kralk and Zhaitan seem to like to take a 1:1 change of target, Primordus and Mord seem to like to take the shape of targets (imo gathered from corpses) and uses lava pools and spawning plants to pump out those designs.

I do agree Mord is different to Zhaitan in how it produces minions but he is very similar to Primordus.

Tree to Mordremoth is Lavapool to Primordus. (both take nonvege and nonlava designs and produce minions based on them – and the “corruption” part is their influence on the tree or pool).

Shiren.9532:

I don’t understand why sylvari are refered to as corrupted. Are destroyers corrupted? Sylvari originate from Mordremoth, they belong to it. It’s not the same as a human becoming a risen or branded or a norn becoming icebrood – Mordremoth is uniquely connected to sylvari. If anything, sylvari are corrupted by whatever gives them free will from Mordremoth and when they hear its call and serve it, they are breaking free from their corruption.

Destroyers are indeed corrupted, just not from living beings.

Sylvari and mordrem are the question that begs answering to me. Which was why I mentioned it.

Shiren.9532:

I don’t think there are set rules for how dragon minions are supposed to behave. Similarities between known dragons doesn’t guarantee those similarities will exist for all dragons.

If it works for 4.5 of the dragon minions (even mordrem attend to these similarities – yet sylvari do not), then why wouldn’t it fit for that last .5?

As said, there’s a distinct difference between mordrem and sylvari just as much as sylvari and other dragon minions – but most of these differences do not exist between mordrem and other dragon minions. The only real difference between non-sylvari mordrem and other dragon minions is that mordrem are grown.

Shiren.9532:

I’m unclear on how the hive mind thing works, is it lore that an asura that dies in battle in Lion’s Arch and comes back as risen 10 minutes later suddenly knows everything all other servants of Zhaitan know? That seems a bit silly. Can Zhaitan speak to an asuran risen in Lion’s Arch from the moment is rises?

The former’s unknown, but the latter is certainly implied and is definite for Kralkatorrik to branded, and Dragonspawn & Jormag to icebrood, Mordremoth to mordrem, and Great Destroyer to destroyers.

This still differs from the Dream, IMO, because there’s still a back-and-forth between dragon/dragon champion and minion, but no back and forth between sylvari and Dream/Pale Tree.

Shiren.9532:

The bit about dragon minions consuming magic, I was under the impression this is meant to be them feeding their ED, not specifically that they themselves need to or want to consume magic. This would explain why sylvari themselves can be magical beings but don’t feed on magic, while Mordrem Guard (confirmed to serve the dragon) take an interest in it.

Glint consumed magic for herself.

Shiren.9532:

While I don’t think any of the biconics or Caithe will spread the word about the sylvari origins, after the cut scene takes place (and sylvari turn on the Pact, destroying their fleet and killing many) I doubt it would take long for word to reach the rest of Pact Tyria, especially in a world where waypoints are a thing. Warning the rest of Tyria of the sylvari’s betrayal would be the biggest priority. It’s also possible the sylvari that responded to Mordremoth’s call reach beyond the Pact front line and even sylvari in the rest of Tyria began to serve the dragon. HoT might launch with sylvari attacking the three Orders, the racial capitals and elsewhere.

But that’s the thing.

How does the Pact know the sylvari’s origins.

All they know is that sylvari got corrupted in large numbers. Mordrem Guard would spout it, but why would the Pact – used to hearing the blatant lies of the risen – believe these obviously visually changed dragon minions?

The only way they’d know is if the surviving sylvari told them. But why would they? And furthermore, why would the Pact believe a sylvari saying the same things as the corrupted sylvari – I for one would just think that sylvari to be corrupted itself instead and trying to sow distrust amongst my fellow forces.

There is no reason for anyone – Pact or otherwise – to know or at least believe the tale of “sylvari were born dragon minions.”

Even upon seeing Blighting Trees, they could – and IMO logically should – just conclude “the Pale Tree is not unique, and its siblings fell to Mordremoth.”

Shiren.9532:

I’m still unclear on what Mordrem Guard are. Are they the same physical body of a regular sylvari, warped by Mordremoth to become something more powerful? Or are they replicas of a sylvari corpse, given their knowledge and memories with the sole purpose to serve Mordremoth?

Based on the article and PoI, both.

Vayne.8563:

First, you’re acting like we know everything there is to know about dragons. We really don’t.

I’m not at all. But the very core of the Elder Dragons ever since The Movement of the World has been, summarized, ‘they corrupt and twist everything they can and destroy the rest.’

But Mordremoth doesn’t corrupt so much as grows. This is different and where I’m coming from. He’s breaking the conformity of the other dragons – even the DSD per the Movement – and for no apparent reason other than to explain why the sylvari are dragon minions and making that reveal so revealing.

We don’t know everything about the Elder Dragons, but since day one the very core of the ED is being broken by Mordremoth and Mordremoth alone.

Vayne.8563:

However, if any dragon is going to be able to make things live, wouldn’t it be the jungle dragon. The dragon of life. I mean Zhaitan was the undead dragon. He corrupted corpses.

Zhaitan corrupted corpses, living beings, land, plants, air, and water. Corpses was just the most common.

And Mordremoth is NOT the dragon of life – he’s the dragon of plant and mind. Huge difference.

Vayne.8563:

The destroyers aren’t corrupted anything as far as I know.

They are – they’re formed of twisted rock and lava (see Movement of the World link above).

Taking standard rock and twisting it and ‘breathing life’.

Primordus is more of a ‘dragon of life’ than Mordremoth – by giving mindless life to stone.

Konig. I appreciate your knowledge of the lore. I really do. How many times do ArenaNet have to miss the mark with story beats and lore though before you realize it will always be a convoluted mess of contradictions and retcons? You seem just as surprised that ArenaNet botched this as some of those Veteran Pact officers are that the Sylvari are being corrupted.

I get your frustration because I share it. If the entirety of the story arc for GW2 had been written before the game came out then there should be certain things that are set in stone so that things don’t get rewritten to contradict previous story beats. These types of contradictions have happened so many times throughout the years that it’s just par for the course.

I feel like there wasn’t a beginning and an end for the overall story of GW2 laid out before the game shipped. It’s too bad. You can’t tell a good story without a beginning and end.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Shiren.9532:

I don’t understand why sylvari are refered to as corrupted. Are destroyers corrupted? Sylvari originate from Mordremoth, they belong to it. It’s not the same as a human becoming a risen or branded or a norn becoming icebrood – Mordremoth is uniquely connected to sylvari. If anything, sylvari are corrupted by whatever gives them free will from Mordremoth and when they hear its call and serve it, they are breaking free from their corruption.

Destroyers are indeed corrupted, just not from living beings.

Sylvari and mordrem are the question that begs answering to me. Which was why I mentioned it.

Shiren.9532:

I don’t think there are set rules for how dragon minions are supposed to behave. Similarities between known dragons doesn’t guarantee those similarities will exist for all dragons.

If it works for 4.5 of the dragon minions (even mordrem attend to these similarities – yet sylvari do not), then why wouldn’t it fit for that last .5?

As said, there’s a distinct difference between mordrem and sylvari just as much as sylvari and other dragon minions – but most of these differences do not exist between mordrem and other dragon minions. The only real difference between non-sylvari mordrem and other dragon minions is that mordrem are grown.

Shiren.9532:

I’m unclear on how the hive mind thing works, is it lore that an asura that dies in battle in Lion’s Arch and comes back as risen 10 minutes later suddenly knows everything all other servants of Zhaitan know? That seems a bit silly. Can Zhaitan speak to an asuran risen in Lion’s Arch from the moment is rises?

The former’s unknown, but the latter is certainly implied and is definite for Kralkatorrik to branded, and Dragonspawn & Jormag to icebrood, Mordremoth to mordrem, and Great Destroyer to destroyers.

This still differs from the Dream, IMO, because there’s still a back-and-forth between dragon/dragon champion and minion, but no back and forth between sylvari and Dream/Pale Tree.

Shiren.9532:

The bit about dragon minions consuming magic, I was under the impression this is meant to be them feeding their ED, not specifically that they themselves need to or want to consume magic. This would explain why sylvari themselves can be magical beings but don’t feed on magic, while Mordrem Guard (confirmed to serve the dragon) take an interest in it.

Glint consumed magic for herself.

Shiren.9532:

While I don’t think any of the biconics or Caithe will spread the word about the sylvari origins, after the cut scene takes place (and sylvari turn on the Pact, destroying their fleet and killing many) I doubt it would take long for word to reach the rest of Pact Tyria, especially in a world where waypoints are a thing. Warning the rest of Tyria of the sylvari’s betrayal would be the biggest priority. It’s also possible the sylvari that responded to Mordremoth’s call reach beyond the Pact front line and even sylvari in the rest of Tyria began to serve the dragon. HoT might launch with sylvari attacking the three Orders, the racial capitals and elsewhere.

But that’s the thing.

How does the Pact know the sylvari’s origins.

All they know is that sylvari got corrupted in large numbers. Mordrem Guard would spout it, but why would the Pact – used to hearing the blatant lies of the risen – believe these obviously visually changed dragon minions?

The only way they’d know is if the surviving sylvari told them. But why would they? And furthermore, why would the Pact believe a sylvari saying the same things as the corrupted sylvari – I for one would just think that sylvari to be corrupted itself instead and trying to sow distrust amongst my fellow forces.

There is no reason for anyone – Pact or otherwise – to know or at least believe the tale of “sylvari were born dragon minions.”

Even upon seeing Blighting Trees, they could – and IMO logically should – just conclude “the Pale Tree is not unique, and its siblings fell to Mordremoth.”

Shiren.9532:

I’m still unclear on what Mordrem Guard are. Are they the same physical body of a regular sylvari, warped by Mordremoth to become something more powerful? Or are they replicas of a sylvari corpse, given their knowledge and memories with the sole purpose to serve Mordremoth?

Based on the article and PoI, both.

Vayne.8563:

First, you’re acting like we know everything there is to know about dragons. We really don’t.

I’m not at all. But the very core of the Elder Dragons ever since The Movement of the World has been, summarized, ‘they corrupt and twist everything they can and destroy the rest.’

But Mordremoth doesn’t corrupt so much as grows. This is different and where I’m coming from. He’s breaking the conformity of the other dragons – even the DSD per the Movement – and for no apparent reason other than to explain why the sylvari are dragon minions and making that reveal so revealing.

We don’t know everything about the Elder Dragons, but since day one the very core of the ED is being broken by Mordremoth and Mordremoth alone.

Vayne.8563:

However, if any dragon is going to be able to make things live, wouldn’t it be the jungle dragon. The dragon of life. I mean Zhaitan was the undead dragon. He corrupted corpses.

Zhaitan corrupted corpses, living beings, land, plants, air, and water. Corpses was just the most common.

And Mordremoth is NOT the dragon of life – he’s the dragon of plant and mind. Huge difference.

Vayne.8563:

The destroyers aren’t corrupted anything as far as I know.

They are – they’re formed of twisted rock and lava (see Movement of the World link above).

Taking standard rock and twisting it and ‘breathing life’.

Primordus is more of a ‘dragon of life’ than Mordremoth – by giving mindless life to stone.

As to whether or not Jormag is the dragon of life, we’ll have to disagree on that. Primordus animates stone. He creates something more akin to elemental forces than life. And jungles are life. Where as Kralkatorrik is associated with crystal, and Jormag is associated with ice and cold and frost, and Primordus is associated with fire and lava, you know, elemental forces, the only dragon we know of that associates with life is Primordus. And yes, plants are life. lol

Vayne.8563:

As to whether or not Jormag is the dragon of life, we’ll have to disagree on that. Primordus animates stone. He creates something more akin to elemental forces than life. And jungles are life. Where as Kralkatorrik is associated with crystal, and Jormag is associated with ice and cold and frost, and Primordus is associated with fire and lava, you know, elemental forces, the only dragon we know of that associates with life is Primordus. And yes, plants are life. lol

You typo’d that! You meant “Mordremoth” instead of a second “Primordus,” I’m sure.

I think the Pale Tree is the cause of the confusion.

Mordremoth corrupted and warped an ancient tree to create seeds of the Pale Tree, that was designed to spawn lesser minions (which turned out to be Sylvari). The Sylvari pop out just like Destroyers from lava pools.

Lava pools don’t naturally pop out lava trolls in the same way trees don’t naturally spawn people but due to dragon corruption they do.

The Sylvari and Destroyers are design products of the corruption effect the dragons have on their targets (vegetation and lava).

The Pale Tree though KNOWS what it is and has thrown in a few difficulties to unravel – is it possible that she has cut herself off from the true hive mind system in fear one day she will be reclaimed (thats why Sylvari feed into her but she doesn’t control all of them)?

Thats my take on how we got here, I think the “dragon corruption” issue is fine with the corruption being targetted at vegetation and the resultant spawnings being a process of the corrupted thing. The hive mind being deliberately shut down by the Pale Tree for fear of reclaimation or her hope that individuality would be a better defense against Mordremoth’s whispers.

Krak also is odd does he resurrect bodies or just grow crystals all through their veins and neural network to wield them like puppets on crystal strings. Because if its the crystal puppet he isn’t “corrupting” them just using them as a vehicle – again this plays into the dragons’ love of living forms (again ignoring easy access to enemy models for the devs).

The fact that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption strongly implies that they are already corrupted themselves. You don’t see an “uncorrupted” state because the corruption’s been built into them from the beginning, all the way back to at least the Pale Tree’s seed. If you want to see an uncorrupted state you’d have to go back to before Mordremoth created those seeds.

I agree with you on many of your points except Mordy’s “Corruption”. Your example of destroyers is apt: Primordus corrupts rock and stone to become destroyers. These things were not ‘alive’ before and now they’ve been animated.

I think you overlook what exactly a plant is. Plants begin as seeds that then grow due to absorbing nutrients and sunlight and water. In fact, a plant physically is its nutrients and other sources of energy because you literally cannot create matter out of nothing. The nutrients provide energy and building blocks for the plant. So our anomalous friend Mordremoth must, in some sense, corrupt these building blocks and the corruption comes out as a plant. In the same way we can digest plant matter to maintain our human anatomy, so too can Mordy take the nutrients and building blocks of soil and organic matter and grow its corrupted plant matter.

That’s the only way it makes sense, to be honest.

Interesting topic. Here’s how I see things:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordrem, however, appear to “grow” from the treess. There is no uncorrupted state. Corpses and living creatures are merely used as templates (not too dissimilar from destroyers which also mimic living beings in shape). But effectively, the mordrem don’t seem to be coming from some uncorrupted state (unlike destroyers).

The mass used for the bodies of the Mordrem clones must be coming from somewhere. Because we see the Mordrem have some plant-like characteristics (e.g. the flowers that grow out of Mordrem wolves), it would seem that this plant-like matter is what Mordremoth has corrupted and has twisted to create these monstrosities. He just happens to take the “easy” way out by modelling his plant monsters on the bodies (templates) of existing races/creatures and making his creations into mockeries of them, which seems in line with other Elder Dragons to me.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Aside from the above point of “not corrupted from anything”, there’s the lack of a hive mind (people say the Dream – but as talked about, the Dream actually acts as a barrier and Killeen in Ghosts of Ascalon outright denies it being a hive mind or group consciousness – and I think the sylvari know what they’re about), there’s how they don’t consume magic – at all – despite mordrem doing such as well as standard risen – and we even see icebrood collecting magical artifacts. And that’s not to touch the more ambiguous aspects of dragon minions like nigh mindlessness sans champions (is every sylvari and mordrem guard a champion? I doubt it!).

I feel a question should be asked here. Have we ever seen how the offspring of freed dragon champions have behaved psychologically before sylvari?

It appears that the Pale Tree, and likely the other seeds, had been purged from dragon corruption, so they essentially were like Glint: freed dragon minions. The Pale Tree’s “children” were born without dragon minion mentality but could be “recorrupted” as seen by sylvari transformation into Mordrem Guard. Perhaps the lack of “hive mind” and the lack of needing to feed on magic are the results of the sylvari not being corrupted dragon minions per se and hence not needing to fit the criteria?

The Mordrem Guard certainly have an established mental connection with Mordremoth as seen in BWE when the Overseer in the story instance asks Ol’ Mordy for help and receives an answer, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Mordrem Guard also fit other criteria of dragon minions as far as consuming magic goes. It’s possible that the sylvari, not having truly “awakened” as their true selves yet, were simply walled off from these traits that were within them all along thanks to the Pale Tree’s meddling which kept them from their dragon source’s direct influence until recently.

As for the “nigh mindlessness” of other dragon minion grunts, perhaps Mordremoth’s modus operandi is different? He is the Dragon of Plants AND Mind after all, so it would make sense for him to not only try to break the barriers of the mind but also keep more intelligent minions than other EDs do. He still has the more beastly Mordrem as the grunts of his army, but the Mordrem Guard are elites, and the Mordrem Guard Commanders are the generals. It’s possible that he might be willing to sacrifice a bit of the magic he’d nommed to keep such intelligent minions around since the pros of the upkeep outweigh the cons, considering how cunning and deadly the Mordrem Guard can be.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Okay, so they’re dragon minions… but still. How would people find out? The only people who know this are 1) Caithe, the PC, and the Biconics, 2) Supposedly Scarlet, but she’s dead and not talking, 3) Mordrem.

That’s something I look forward to finding out too. I’d imagine the writers have thought of something that will make sense lore-wise once we experience the story. So far all we’ve seen have been snippets in which the Pact are distrustful of sylvari after seeing so many sylvari turning against them out of the blue, but I haven’t noticed any indication that they’ve learned that the sylvari are actually supposed to be Mordremoth’s minions.

Not that the other races even need to know the dragon minion connection to act against the sylvari, however. If they learn that any sylvari anywhere can snap at any time and turn against their allies, that should be enough reason for people to think it will be best to lock the sylvari up until they can figure out what is going on. There’s enough distrust for the sylvari already thanks to Scarlet who brought the concept of “evil” sylvari to the general public consciousness better than any pirate sylvari or Nightmare Courtier ever did and who left behind enough destruction to make people start looking at this young race in a different light now that they know what the bad apples are capable of.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Or will everyone know sylvari were born dragon minions because of the same reason everyone suddenly knew the name Mordremoth and the term mordrem? Aka, no explanation at all – it just bloody happened. And Anet was shamed, admitting it was a bad move.

Yeah, this is what confused me about LW Season 2 too. A simple fix would be adding a page about Mordremoth to the Elder Dragons book in DR if it was meant to be common knowledge, and maybe give an off-hand explanation within the same book why this dragon’s minions are called Mordrem and not, say, Blighted. At least that way there would be a good enough handwave for this information existing beforehand outside of an attack name in Crucible of Eternity.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

So why is this such an experience of horror? Only the greenhorns of the Pact would really see such as an ‘experience of horror.’ Yet it seems even Orrian veterans do.

I’d imagine the difference here is that unlike all other dragon minions, you can generally see symptoms of corruption beforehand. For example, the Risen are “born” before the corpse even hits the ground, so people know what to expect.

But with sylvari it’s different. Let’s say you see a sylvari next to you with an agonized look on their face, maybe even mumbling to themselves. Perhaps this sylvari is just stressed by the horrors they have witnessed in war (a reasonable deduction)…or maybe they’re slowly succumbing to an Elder Dragon’s mental siren song and can stab you in the back when you least expect it?

This uncertainty element is what the horror comment by Leah likely meant. Because Mordremoth can keep calling a sylvari again and again until even a strong-willed sylvari’s mind cracks, there’s really no telling when the sylvari loses control of themselves and turns, and the change isn’t even physical at first so there are no outward symptoms to look out for. Essentially every scared/confused/stoic/overly emotional sylvari will now be viewed as a potential threat after the Pact sees more and more of them turning, so paranoia will run rampant. Fear is the mind killer, and minds that are afraid are that much easier to influence…

Shiren.9532:

I’m still unclear on what Mordrem Guard are. Are they the same physical body of a regular sylvari, warped by Mordremoth to become something more powerful? Or are they replicas of a sylvari corpse, given their knowledge and memories with the sole purpose to serve Mordremoth?

Diarmad still confuses me. We fight and kill her three times. If we killed her real body, why did she come back two more times? If Mordrem aren’t born as whole, complete creatures independant of sylvari as I had assumed based off what I saw in BWE2, what is in the green pods at the Corpse Grove?

According to Leah Hoyer in the POI, the Mordrem Guard are kind of both…to an extent. Here’s how the process goes as far as I understand it:

Mordremoth whispers into the sylvari’s mind, trying to make them accept their destiny as his minions. Weak-willed sylvari succumb to this siren song faster, strong-willed sylvari fight back longer. However, Mordremoth keeps calling again and again and again until the sylvari’s mind finally cracks, and then it’s ‘good night’ to that individual.

Once the targeted sylvari accepts Mordremoth’s call, they become corrupted and turn into Mordrem Guard. They undergo a physical transformation which gives them a harder, bark-like exterior, makes them grow taller and more monstrous, and also warps their minds to make them fanatics who see Mordremoth as their one true path while they believe that the Pale Tree kept them from their true selves, and think that the Wyld and Dark Hunts were but mere annoying distractions from their true mission which is to serve the dragon. They still retain their memories and personality to an extent, but it’s now twisted to look favourably on Mordremoth while they use their knowledge against their former allies. They are essentially the elites of Mordremoth’s army who help bring bodies (alive or dead) of other races/creatures to the Blighting Trees to be used as templates for the creation of Mordrem who are twisted clones of the original bodies.

There are three Mordrem Guard Commanders, and we know that at least one of them, Legendary Blademaster Diarmid, is a turned Pact sylvari. The commanders are more powerful than the “normal” Mordrem Guard (if the Mordrem Guard are elites of the army, the commanders are champions), they command the Mordrem Guard and Mordrem, and are apparently capable of creating minions. It seems that only the commanders will be reborn in clone bodies with their minds transferred to the new body after their defeat to continue their reign of terror. The common Mordrem, however, are born as “mindless”, corrupted clones based on the templates of the original captured bodies, and the normal Mordrem Guard are simply turned sylvari with new looks and are not cloned at all.

It’s possible that the process of transferring a minion’s consciousness to an equally powerful clone body is a costly process magically, so Mordremoth doesn’t want to mass-produce such high-level champions more than necessary, which is why they’re limited to three at any given time and why the normal Mordrem Guard don’t receive such luxurious treatment.

So basically Diarmid was originally a turned sylvari who became a powerful Mordrem Guard Commander. When she was killed for the first time, her consciousness was transferred into a clone body which was grown to host said consciousness. Soon after she returned to the battlefield as the same individual as before but this time in an exact replica of her slain body, which explains why she keeps coming back to face us. The same applies to the other two as of yet unnamed commanders too.

Finally got some real time to go through the responses in this thread…

Galen Grey.4709:

Like there is nothing that suggests “corruption” works the same way between dragons. In fact I’d say it doesnt really seem to be the case. Like Zaithan corrupts the dead, while kralkatorrik corrupted the living. Seems more like each dragon does its thing to corrupt and create minions. Modremoth being the dragon of nature and by extension life it seems to like it make sense it would birth its minions. As for whats actually being corrupted, it may as well be nature itself. Its not like trees in a untouch, natural state would birth sylvari or other modrem creates. That they’re now doing this may very well be the result of the dragon corruption.

You’re not entirely true. Throughout the game, while corpses are the “main” thing that Zhaitan corrupts we see him corrupting living beings, plants, ground, air, and water. Kralkatorrik is similar in that he corrupted the land, air, and living beings. Jormag’s been shown to corrupt ice, living beings, and even corpses. Primordus has been known to corrupt land and fire, but is told to be capable of corrupting living beings too.

By all indication, all dragons are capable of corrupting the same ‘materials’ or ‘subjects’, but their corruption takes a different form, and they corrupt a specific type of subject more than others (e.g., Zhaitan with corpses).

As for trees untouched giving birth to plant creature – maybe not in that specific context, but we do have non-mordrem plant creatures seen throughout GW1 of various kinds and sizes, and in GW2 we have the treants (which are mobile trees).

Galen Grey.4709:

Now why dont they all serve him? well dragon influence doesnt seem to be absolute, you need to kinda let that influence in before it takes over. That how it was described in the latest POI but it isnt completely new either.
In: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragonspawn it is stated that: His power infused them, tempted them. which against seems to indicate that dragon corruption is kinda like the dark side. Its alluring and it may be hard to avoid it but ultimately you need to be the one to accept it.

Jormag’s been stated as unique by a few NPCs such as Khrigar Ripjaw in that Jormag and icebrood do not forcibly corrupt but ‘convince’ people to join him willingly and corrupts those willing converts – this is an indirect explanation for why Jora was able to avoid corruption, but excluding Mordremoth, Jormag is the only dragon to do such. In the case of the Dragonspawn, he was a mesmer that used mental manipulation to trick people via compulsion to accept the gift (that compulsion being the ‘temptation’).

It should be noted that the Sons of Svanir who channel Jormag’s powers into other break Jormag’s rule of ‘willing converts only’ and even that rule, as shown by the Dragonspawn, is flimsy at best.

But sylvari refusing Mordremoth’s call isn’t a case of concern here. It’s everyone’s reaction to this sudden revelation that by all logical reasoning shouldn’t be known to anyone but a handful.

Galen Grey.4709:

So its not like Sylvari are dragon minions that dont behave like dragon minions but rather they’re just not imprinted yet.

I think you misunderstood me. It’s not sylvari behavior. It’s sylvari function.

Their biological function, not their personality behavior.

Galen Grey.4709:

as for how does everyone know that the sylvari are dragon minions, it may not have happened on screen but people talk. I mean consider you’re in a fleet and suddenly a large number of a certain group of people start sabotaging everything. Naturally you’ll distrust even the one who didnt take part in the sabotage but who belong to that group.

So there was a mass spread of corruption. But that wouldn’t explain why everyone is going “they belong to the dragon now, they cannot be trusted!”

Instead they should be going “they can be easily corrupted by Mordremoth, but their physical appearance does change over time (into the Mordrem Guard appearance) when this happens!”

It would be as if a whole number of norn suddenly go berserk and a week later those berserked norn have ice coating their skin. They got corrupted into icebrood. Does this mean that every norn was created by Jormag and will turn into an icebrood at any moment? kitten NO!

Galen Grey.4709:

Non sylvari hear it as screeching and other animalistic noises but the slyvari hear it and understand it. Essentially whats understandably freaky is a slyvari might turn at anytime and you’d only realize once their dagger as a few inches embedded in you… if thats not nerve wrecking not sure what is.

Precisely. So until sylvari start yapping “oh, hey, buddy I’ve been with in the Pact for a couple years, apparently my race are born dragon minions… yeah” no non-sylvari would know that they can understand Mordremoth. They’d just assume Mordremoth’s the only ED to be capable of corrupting sylvari and that the Mordrem Guard who shout “sylvari are born dragon minions!” are liars just like the risen who shouted “Zhaitan will reunite you with your lost loved ones!”

To non-sylvari, it’s the same situation as before.

Galen Grey.4709:

well fighting family and friends is never fun but once again its different in that in other cases we had closure so to speak… my friend died before being bought back to life and i have to fight him. My friend got engulfed in crystal before he turning against me. In each case you’re seeing them fall and you know they’re lost before you need to raise your arms against them. No such luck with turned slyvari, its like if your best friend suddenly tries to kill you, it takes a while before you can process that and I can see it as a little more freaky than what we had before.

It’s not exactly clear with icebrood either… Sometimes they’re encased in ice, other times they’re hearing whispers in their head by champions such as Drakkar and the Dragonspawn.

Donari.5237:

About the growing vs corrupting:

I think it’s more that Mordremoth corrupts a plant that then bears corrupted fruit, in this case minions. Remember, a Destroyer Queen was able to lay eggs that became more destroyers (if you study the Skritt in Harathi, you encounter this in your PS). The theory was that she had the eggs ready at the time she became corrupted.

Coulter.2315:

I think your logic falls down when you look at Primordus – you say that he corrupts lava and rocks but don’t believe that Mordremoth isn’t corrupting vegetation.

Eg. Primordus manipulates a lava pool to spawn Destroyers (as we have seen), Mordremoth corrupts a plant to spawn Mordrem.

On the tree part: Sounds plausible, but then what’s the non-corrupted version of these Blighting Trees/Pale Trees? Wouldn’t they spawn plant creatures of some sort too (perhaps the origins of the Treants or other GW1 plant creatures)?

I’ll admit, I didn’t think of this as I was thinking “they’re all equally mordrem and mordrem could be formed without the tree producing them”.

But that doesn’t really answer the situation of what sylvari are pre-corruption. No other dragon’s champions are capable of taking a piece of themselves and that piece grows into a dragon minion.

Re: Destroyer Queen – it was just one of two possibilities presented when all we saw were crablings spawning from eggs. If you choose to rescue the trapped skritt, you’ll see trolls and harpies forming from those eggs too, which shows that it’s not a case of pregnant creature being corrupted.

Coulter.2315:

We also don’t know that Mordremoth is physically attached to every one of his vines.

Depending on what you’re talking about when saying vines, we know he isn’t. The only ones Taimi ever speculated (note, it was a speculation and not fact) being Mordremoth were those going after the waypoints directly – the rest she speculated being actual separate minions and ‘corruption’.

Iason Evan.3806:

How many times do ArenaNet have to miss the mark with story beats and lore though before you realize it will always be a convoluted mess of contradictions and retcons?

That’s actually why I made this thread…

Iason Evan.3806:

You seem just as surprised that ArenaNet botched this as some of those Veteran Pact officers are that the Sylvari are being corrupted.

No surprise, actually. Just confusion as to why they’re promoting this as “oh my such newness! Drama! Spectatularity!” etc. etc.

Vayne.8563:

As to whether or not Jormag is the dragon of life, we’ll have to disagree on that. Primordus animates stone. He creates something more akin to elemental forces than life. And jungles are life. Where as Kralkatorrik is associated with crystal, and Jormag is associated with ice and cold and frost, and Primordus is associated with fire and lava, you know, elemental forces, the only dragon we know of that associates with life is Primordus. And yes, plants are life. lol

Eh, you got your naming a bit mixed up.

Primordus animates stone was my exact basis of the statement. Take a look at ancient myths that describe the creation of man. Many of them are some form of “a god/God shaped clay into the shape of a man and breathed life into it”. Well, Primordus is doing the same – shaping rock and fire into the shape of a creature and ‘breathing life’ into it. Just without free will and, sans champions per EotN, mindless.

Plants are living, but not the force of life, and that wouldn’t make Mordremoth the “dragon of life”.

Coulter.2315:

Lava pools don’t naturally pop out lava trolls in the same way trees don’t naturally spawn people but due to dragon corruption they do.

While destroyers are formed in lava pools, it’s not the lava pool but nearby champions (in both cases we’ve seen this – The Great Destroyer and the Destroyer of Life) that form the destroyers.

Coulter.2315:

The Pale Tree though KNOWS what it is and has thrown in a few difficulties to unravel – is it possible that she has cut herself off from the true hive mind system in fear one day she will be reclaimed (thats why Sylvari feed into her but she doesn’t control all of them)?

Wouldn’t explain why Malyck has no dream – no mental connection to anything at all. And wouldn’t explain why the Dream/Nightmare is said to be the protection against Mordremoth.

Coulter.2315:

Krak also is odd does he resurrect bodies or just grow crystals all through their veins and neural network to wield them like puppets on crystal strings. Because if its the crystal puppet he isn’t “corrupting” them just using them as a vehicle – again this plays into the dragons’ love of living forms (again ignoring easy access to enemy models for the devs).

Given the models, it seems that while icebrood form ice on the outside and the skin/hair/muscle/tendons slowly turn to ice to leave nothing but ice and bones (e.g., icebrood colossus), branded are the opposite and immediate – the inside crystallizing, leaving nothing but crystal and skin (and in concept art, bone). I wouldn’t say that’s puppeting since as shown in Edge of Destiny the sapient ones (champions) still retain their old knowledge.

glehmann.9586:

The fact that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption strongly implies that they are already corrupted themselves. You don’t see an “uncorrupted” state because the corruption’s been built into them from the beginning, all the way back to at least the Pale Tree’s seed. If you want to see an uncorrupted state you’d have to go back to before Mordremoth created those seeds.

You missed it entirely.

I never questioned sylvari being corrupted. But what’s the form before sylvari/Pale Tree? That’s what I was saying – there’s nothing, so we’ve been indicated. Particularly for sylvari.

No other champion just plucks a piece of their body and it transforms and grows into a dragon minion. Only the Blighting Trees/Pale Tree(s) do this.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

I agree with you on many of your points except Mordy’s “Corruption”. Your example of destroyers is apt: Primordus corrupts rock and stone to become destroyers. These things were not ‘alive’ before and now they’ve been animated.

I think you overlook what exactly a plant is. Plants begin as seeds that then grow due to absorbing nutrients and sunlight and water. In fact, a plant physically is its nutrients and other sources of energy because you literally cannot create matter out of nothing. The nutrients provide energy and building blocks for the plant. So our anomalous friend Mordremoth must, in some sense, corrupt these building blocks and the corruption comes out as a plant. In the same way we can digest plant matter to maintain our human anatomy, so too can Mordy take the nutrients and building blocks of soil and organic matter and grow its corrupted plant matter.

That’s the only way it makes sense, to be honest.

Curious take. Thanks.

Kossage.9072:

The mass used for the bodies of the Mordrem clones must be coming from somewhere. Because we see the Mordrem have some plant-like characteristics (e.g. the flowers that grow out of Mordrem wolves), it would seem that this plant-like matter is what Mordremoth has corrupted and has twisted to create these monstrosities. He just happens to take the “easy” way out by modelling his plant monsters on the bodies (templates) of existing races/creatures and making his creations into mockeries of them, which seems in line with other Elder Dragons to me.

This works for the Mordrem Wolf and Mordrem Troll, but not the Mordrem Guard which are grown from the Blighting Trees – or, in turn, sylvari grown from the Pale Trees.

Kossage.9072:

I feel a question should be asked here. Have we ever seen how the offspring of freed dragon champions have behaved psychologically before sylvari?

Gleam in Eye of the North, though he just stood around being defended by destroyers.

It’s likely that the Crystal Guardians and Crystal Spiders in Glint’s lair were her ‘corruptions’ of sand or the like though, but they also give no personality traits – they defend her like the Forgotten do.

Kossage.9072:

It appears that the Pale Tree, and likely the other seeds, had been purged from dragon corruption, so they essentially were like Glint: freed dragon minions. The Pale Tree’s “children” were born without dragon minion mentality but could be “recorrupted” as seen by sylvari transformation into Mordrem Guard. Perhaps the lack of “hive mind” and the lack of needing to feed on magic are the results of the sylvari not being corrupted dragon minions per se and hence not needing to fit the criteria?

If they’re like Glint, then like Glint they should still consume magic. No?

Kossage.9072:

As for the “nigh mindlessness” of other dragon minion grunts, perhaps Mordremoth’s modus operandi is different? He is the Dragon of Plants AND Mind after all, so it would make sense for him to not only try to break the barriers of the mind but also keep more intelligent minions than other EDs do. He still has the more beastly Mordrem as the grunts of his army, but the Mordrem Guard are elites, and the Mordrem Guard Commanders are the generals. It’s possible that he might be willing to sacrifice a bit of the magic he’d nommed to keep such intelligent minions around since the pros of the upkeep outweigh the cons, considering how cunning and deadly the Mordrem Guard can be.

By that argument, the Pale Tree is losing a lot of magic by creating constant smart sylvari.

Kossage.9072:

That’s something I look forward to finding out too. I’d imagine the writers have thought of something that will make sense lore-wise once we experience the story. So far all we’ve seen have been snippets in which the Pact are distrustful of sylvari after seeing so many sylvari turning against them out of the blue, but I haven’t noticed any indication that they’ve learned that the sylvari are actually supposed to be Mordremoth’s minions.

It’s already been shown in-game that sylvari are dragon minions and that this is known to at least the sylvari. During the Mordrem Invasions, the Mordrem Researcher in Brisban, Eullo, had dialogue talking about being near the sylvari there to study Mordremoth and his affects on his minions – but note that no change has affected them.

So it’s already out there. It’s already known.

But why?

Kossage.9072:

But with sylvari it’s different. Let’s say you see a sylvari next to you with an agonized look on their face, maybe even mumbling to themselves. Perhaps this sylvari is just stressed by the horrors they have witnessed in war (a reasonable deduction)…or maybe they’re slowly succumbing to an Elder Dragon’s mental siren song and can stab you in the back when you least expect it?

This uncertainty element is what the horror comment by Leah likely meant. Because Mordremoth can keep calling a sylvari again and again until even a strong-willed sylvari’s mind cracks, there’s really no telling when the sylvari loses control of themselves and turns, and the change isn’t even physical at first so there are no outward symptoms to look out for. Essentially every scared/confused/stoic/overly emotional sylvari will now be viewed as a potential threat after the Pact sees more and more of them turning, so paranoia will run rampant. Fear is the mind killer, and minds that are afraid are that much easier to influence…

Hmmm, I guess…

I mainly thought that the very act of corruption gave the tree the spawning ability (not necessary that the target tree had the spawning ability before the corruption), so there would be no spawned Sylvari from the uncorrupted version of a spawning tree.

Malyck’s Tree is awkward it could be that it had no dream because it wasn’t influenced while it spawned Malyck (though the Great Destroyer was acting for Primordus when he was asleep so Mord being asleep doesn’t really lead to that) or maybe Malyck being detached from the Tree early (I guess something went wrong because he was found alone) caused damage to his link?

Yer the Dragon lore does seem to be on the trot a lot – I’m very excited to have the Mursaat back (just need the true Gods too and we’ll be back on track). Its fun trying to fit a pattern to what they give us though.

I’m glad that you finally realized that Arenanet’s storytelling has bigger plot holes than swiss cheese. Now the next step is to accept that, forget what you thought you knew and just take the new things as they are presented.

They’ve been operating with plot holes and a “lore” that is almost complete chaos if you try to look at it with the GW1 lore as a starting point.

So, nothing to see here, move along. Enjoy the story.

First off, Anet can’t explain everything going on in the world all at once, or else you’ll be sitting in front of a screen watching cutscene after cutscene to get caught up, so some things you have to assume.

As for other people knowing the sylvari have turned? Well, what makes you think it was only the Pact Sylvari that turned? Some Sylvari around the world most likely turned as well and had to be cut down.

Mord was able to reach all the way to Ascalon to spread his influence, chances are the call went there as well. No, Anet is most likely not going to have NPCs say this in any of the cities, or react to it in the core game at least, but at the same time, Anet wants this to stay a big reveal for anyone that purchases the game.

Coulter.2315:

Yer the Dragon lore does seem to be on the trot a lot – I’m very excited to have the Mursaat back (just need the true Gods too and we’ll be back on track). Its fun trying to fit a pattern to what they give us though.

I find this to be the most ironic post when you look back at some events.

Its true the lore on the dragons is sorta on a trot, mainly because, going by in game knowledge, we know absolutely NOTHING about them. Well, almost nothing, we have bits an pieces that are leading us to believe its in a trot.

Essentially we would have to look to some time or event that could’ve given clues about the dragons, if only we were given the chance…

OH YEAH! If Evon had won we’d get a fractal about the Gods and Abaddon! Somehow we may have gotten some dragon knowledge, since I doubt Scarlet was alive back then to interfere.

Good thing Kiel won though and we saw what happened to the reactor…

Coulter.2315:

I mainly thought that the very act of corruption gave the tree the spawning ability (not necessary that the target tree had the spawning ability before the corruption), so there would be no spawned Sylvari from the uncorrupted version of a spawning tree.

Hmmm….

Then the ‘uncorrupted sylvari’ would, in fact, be literal fruit by that argument.

Kind of hard seeing a pear being corrupted into a humanoid shape.

Coulter.2315:

Yer the Dragon lore does seem to be on the trot a lot – I’m very excited to have the Mursaat back (just need the true Gods too and we’ll be back on track). Its fun trying to fit a pattern to what they give us though.

Well, it’s not confirmed they’re mursaat yet.

kolompi.1287:

I’m glad that you finally realized that Arenanet’s storytelling has bigger plot holes than swiss cheese.

The sad thing is that it didn’t always have this. It wasn’t until Scarlet Briar’s introduction that the swiss cheese began to form. And I realized this from the get-go.

kolompi.1287:

They’ve been operating with plot holes and a “lore” that is almost complete chaos if you try to look at it with the GW1 lore as a starting point.

Not really. In GW1, it was scattered, but not full of plot holes and chaos.

Unless you refer to that scatteredness as “chaos”.

Serophous.9085:

First off, Anet can’t explain everything going on in the world all at once, or else you’ll be sitting in front of a screen watching cutscene after cutscene to get caught up, so some things you have to assume.

I don’t expect them to explain everything.

I do, however, expect them to explain why their major selling point in the plot is such a big deal.

Particularly, points 2 and 3.

Points 1 and 1.5 I expect to be explained in HoT itself.

Serophous.9085:

As for other people knowing the sylvari have turned? Well, what makes you think it was only the Pact Sylvari that turned? Some Sylvari around the world most likely turned as well and had to be cut down.

Even so, everyone who has heard news of things would know that Mordremoth’s reach is as far as the Iron Marches by now. Would it really be so surprising if sylvari – plant creatures – get corrupted by a plant-“corrupting” (by all first-look appearances at least) dragon within that distance?

It’s like people being shocked and surprised that a corpse in Sparkfly Fen gets turned into a risen.

It’s not so much “who sees sylvari become Mordrem Guard” so much as “why do people equate sylvari becoming Mordrem Guard with ‘sylvari are dragon minions’” or “why do people know sylvari are dragon minions.”

Serophous.9085:

Essentially we would have to look to some time or event that could’ve given clues about the dragons, if only we were given the chance…

OH YEAH! If Evon had won we’d get a fractal about the Gods and Abaddon! Somehow we may have gotten some dragon knowledge, since I doubt Scarlet was alive back then to interfere.

I’ve seen this claim before.

But honestly, why would an event that deals with a war between the gods – and was nowhere near any sleeping dragon – deal with the Elder Dragons any more than the explosion of a reactor that utilized dragon energy?

We actually did learn a tiny bit of Elder Dragon lore from that fractal, particularly that it doesn’t mix well with other forms of magic such as chaos magic.

There might have been no Scarlet, but it would be completely foolish to expect Elder Dragon lore. Not everything relates to the Elder Dragon (or that’s how it should be…).

Donari.5237:

Vayne.8563:

As to whether or not Jormag is the dragon of life, we’ll have to disagree on that. Primordus animates stone. He creates something more akin to elemental forces than life. And jungles are life. Where as Kralkatorrik is associated with crystal, and Jormag is associated with ice and cold and frost, and Primordus is associated with fire and lava, you know, elemental forces, the only dragon we know of that associates with life is Primordus. And yes, plants are life. lol

You typo’d that! You meant “Mordremoth” instead of a second “Primordus,” I’m sure.

Yeah, that’s what I get for answering posts at 4am lol

I’ve seen this claim before.

But honestly, why would an event that deals with a war between the gods – and was nowhere near any sleeping dragon – deal with the Elder Dragons any more than the explosion of a reactor that utilized dragon energy?

We actually did learn a tiny bit of Elder Dragon lore from that fractal, particularly that it doesn’t mix well with other forms of magic such as chaos magic.

There might have been no Scarlet, but it would be completely foolish to expect Elder Dragon lore. Not everything relates to the Elder Dragon (or that’s how it should be…).

When the event took place, all we were told was “If you choose Evon, God Fractal. Choose Kiel, find out why the reactor exploded.” That was it. There was no mention of the Dragons at all.

But now after seeing the result, we can figure Anet was going to tie it to the dragons no matter what, as we saw with the reactor and Scarlet.

So it basically turned to “great, we know about laylines, and not about what happened with the Gods.” And the information seemed pointless.

Too be fair, this decision probably DID guide how the rest of the story turned out, with Scarlet’s machine dealing with leyline power, finding her first notes and stuff talking about leylines, etc. If the other had won, we may be dealing with more god stuff like temples or artifacts.

I feel you’re overlooking a big detail that separates Modremoth from the other dragons.

Modremoth’s minions are still alive. Up until now we’ve had Zhaitan who mostly corrupts dead things (No functional genitals), Jormag who corrupts the living and turns them into animated ice (No genitals), Kraalkatorrik who corrupts the living by turning them into crystal (No genitals), Primordus who corrupts inanimate objects (No genitals), and Bubbles who corrupts water (No genitals, just tentacles).

Modremoth corrupts the vegetation and twists it to his needs, but the corruption process doesn’t render the plant unable to reproduce the way the other dragons’ corruption does. He then uses the plant’s natural ability to reproduce to spawn more minions who are born corrupted by his influence. Modremoth’s minions are different than the other dragons’ because he is the only elder dragon that let’s his minions keep their reproductive capabilities after being corrupted so he can exploit it.

As far as why the Sylvari don’t consume magic, it’s entirely possible that the Pale Tree had more say in their biology than we know. It’s possible she may still consume magic via her roots but didn’t want her children to feed off magic for whatever reason. We know Zhaitan was able to make different kinds of minions for specific tasks so there isn’t any reason I can think of that the Pale Tree couldn’t choose what her spawn consumed.

And for people knowing what the Sylvari are so suddenly. There was already a lot of suspicion around where the Sylvari came from. The Sylvari and the Pale Tree could never answer that question in any full degree, and I’m sure the people of Tyria had their suspicions of where these weirdly helpful plant-folk came from. Now suddenly, without warning, the Sylvari turn against the PACT at a crucial moment and many of the Sylvari who turned begin spouting off about how they are Modremoth’s creations and have been since the beginning. I’m sure SOME soldiers wouldn’t believe it, but I doubt absolutely no one would. In fact from the perspective of a normal Tyrian it explains a lot.

Kossage explained why this is different emotionally pretty well so I won’t get into that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

kolompi.1287:

They’ve been operating with plot holes and a “lore” that is almost complete chaos if you try to look at it with the GW1 lore as a starting point.

Not really. In GW1, it was scattered, but not full of plot holes and chaos.

Unless you refer to that scatteredness as “chaos”.

I meant that while in GW1 it was scattered, it made sense if you took the effort to put the puzzle together. But if you try to use the lore of GW1 as a platform to make GW2 “lore” work, it is rather chaotic and full of holes

“Zhaitan will reunite you with your lost loved ones!”

Technically, that isn’t a lie. Zhaitan DID reunite them with lost loved ones, in a fashion.

it’s twisted, and obviously not a good thing for anyone who isn’t a risen, but it’s not an outright lie.

who knows, maybe the risen don’t see themselves as risen? maybe they see themselves and other risen as regular people still? maybe to them, orr is still in it’s heyday rather than the barnacle encrusted mess it is?

Just a thought, this debate about sylvari being dragon minions sounds like it could just be really clumsy wording:

“Yes, it’s true—sylvari were created to be dragon minions. And now Mordremoth has called them home.”

If the Blighting trees are essentially corrupted equivalents to the pale tree (and apparently the intended form if we look from Mordremoths perspective), surely then the Sylvari weren’t the intended minions, but Mordrem Guard are?

The Pale Tree being influenced and cultivated from seed by Ronan & Ventari, are we to assume that in the process, whether by Ventari’s magic or something else, they were able to cleanse the corruption from the tree while in seed form. Thus leading to sylvari being different to their corrupted counterparts, but similar in makeup and so vulnerable to the call? Is Mordremoth is fighting against the protective magic infused into the Sylvari by Ventari?

It would certainly make more sense if the intention of whats been said is that Mordremoth intended for the seeds to become Blighting trees, and therefore Mordrem Guard being the dragon minions, not sylvari themselves.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Coulter.2315:

I mainly thought that the very act of corruption gave the tree the spawning ability (not necessary that the target tree had the spawning ability before the corruption), so there would be no spawned Sylvari from the uncorrupted version of a spawning tree.

Hmmm….

Then the ‘uncorrupted sylvari’ would, in fact, be literal fruit by that argument.

Kind of hard seeing a pear being corrupted into a humanoid shape.

Ah but we heard recently that Mordremoth takes corpses and clones their likeness to make minions with spawning trees (guess whats under the Pale Tree – dead Ronan and family corpses). The Pale Tree has been mashing together the likeness of Ronan and his family and pumping out her “fruit” just as designed.

Primordus does corrupt living things. Personal Story → Whispers Order → Skritt lesser race storyline. Tybalt pretty much confirms this when talking about the destroyer eggs.

On your first point:
I think Mordremoth has corrupted seeds (the one of Ronan’s cave) which are able to give life to Mordrem. The problem is the Pale Tree was planted without a hive mind to control it and its fruit, the Sylvari. The Pale Tree acts the same way other corrupted trees do, it has used bodies (human ones from Ronan and his family) as template for its creation. Malyck’s tree did the same apparently.
I don’t know how but at some point the Pale Tree, and only this one from what we know, gained sentience / access to the Dream to grant protection on its furit and apparently on itself. Is it some centaur ritual from Ventari or proximity of a ley line? It could also come from a forgotten purification ala Glaust. I’m not sure the Pale Tree herself as protective conciousness is aware of her corrupted plat state… she would have told us before.

On your second point:
For what we’ve seen so far, people in Tyria are defiant against Sylvari because of Scarlet, and maybe they heard the news about Aerin. At the beginning of HOT, the only ones who are naming them as dragon minions are the Pact Soldiers who see many of their sylvari comrades turn against us. Some may have told things like “My master calls… death to the Pact”. So far, the news of this event have not spread to the east, but it will eventually and then those who are already angry at the plant race will be ready to hate them and convince those who were just wondering.

Finally on your point three:
I don’t see the problem of not getting used to horror. Some of my ancestors have seen two world wars during their life and they never said anything about WW2 being easy to deal with after the atrocities of WW1. Your quote doesn’t say they will discover the horror of fighting former comrades but that they will experience it. They should have written “again” maybe but I also think that after Zhaitan’s fall, some brave Tyrians saw hopes and rallied the force of the Pact to fight the next dragon. For those ones they will experience the horror for the first time.

I think the one thing everyone forgets is that most of the lore information we receive is through the characters themselves in the game. In other words, we receive most of our information that we base as fact on what is called an UNRELIABLE NARRATOR.
The characters in game believe the information they have is true, so they present it to us as fact when in fact that may not be the case.

Look at us out here in real life, how many times have we been told something is true only to be later told that what we believed to be true was not?

Have you ever noticed that most of the videos that are released have voiced over narration from characters in game? That what we know of the Dragons and the Pale Tree is what the characters have told us in game. What if the information we are told out of game, is based on what we would find out while playing the game, which is based on perceived facts gathered from the characters in game.

What if they are wrong?

Do we know the information the Pale Tree gives us is fact, or is it only what she believes to be true? How do we know, unknown to her, that Mordremoth has not just been feeding her misinformation or twisted truths sowing mistrust and discord?

Perhaps they only have part of it figured out. We only see what they do, and none of them (save Scarlet, and only her interpretation of it) have seen the big picture.

Connection1 : Scarlet, a sylvari, talked about hearing voices in her head, blew up LA and woke up Mordremoth.
Connection 2: Aerin, a sylvari, goes crazy after Mordremoth wakes up, destroys the Zephyrite fleet.
Connection 3: A lot of sylvari turn against the Pact after the Pact decides to take on Mordremoth.

How are you still confused about why people think sylvari are dragon minions?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

glehmann.9586:

The fact that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption strongly implies that they are already corrupted themselves. You don’t see an “uncorrupted” state because the corruption’s been built into them from the beginning, all the way back to at least the Pale Tree’s seed. If you want to see an uncorrupted state you’d have to go back to before Mordremoth created those seeds.

You missed it entirely.

I never questioned sylvari being corrupted. But what’s the form before sylvari/Pale Tree? That’s what I was saying – there’s nothing, so we’ve been indicated. Particularly for sylvari.

No other champion just plucks a piece of their body and it transforms and grows into a dragon minion. Only the Blighting Trees/Pale Tree(s) do this.

How about the Destroyer Queen? It lays eggs, and since the destroyers are literally just animated stone and magma, those eggs are literally just parts of itself that is is separating and growing into new minions.

As for what the sylvari’s form was pre-corruption, who knows. We haven’t seen what the pale/blighting trees’ seeds were like before Mordremoth’s corruption. Maybe there’s no pre-corruption form and they are literally plant seeds that he grew from his own plant-like body, the same way the wiki describes destroyers as being “forged from the molten heart of [Primordus]”.

glehmann.9586:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

glehmann.9586:

The fact that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption strongly implies that they are already corrupted themselves. You don’t see an “uncorrupted” state because the corruption’s been built into them from the beginning, all the way back to at least the Pale Tree’s seed. If you want to see an uncorrupted state you’d have to go back to before Mordremoth created those seeds.

You missed it entirely.

I never questioned sylvari being corrupted. But what’s the form before sylvari/Pale Tree? That’s what I was saying – there’s nothing, so we’ve been indicated. Particularly for sylvari.

No other champion just plucks a piece of their body and it transforms and grows into a dragon minion. Only the Blighting Trees/Pale Tree(s) do this.

How about the Destroyer Queen? It lays eggs, and since the destroyers are literally just animated stone and magma, those eggs are literally just parts of itself that is is separating and growing into new minions.

As for what the sylvari’s form was pre-corruption, who knows. We haven’t seen what the pale/blighting trees’ seeds were like before Mordremoth’s corruption. Maybe there’s no pre-corruption form and they are literally plant seeds that he grew from his own plant-like body, the same way the wiki describes destroyers as being “forged from the molten heart of [Primordus]”.

The Dragon minions and spawners do seem to ignore conservation of mass don’t they. Possible they convert magic in the air or nearby to create the new things – Mordremoth’s spawners at least have roots underground which you can imagine draining over large areas to spawn but the Destroyer Queen dropping eggs kinda makes you wonder if there is a biological part or if its just again mimicking the form of biological creatures (while draining magic from the air to construct the extra mass from nothing).

I still like the idea Mordremoth chooses for his champion a grand old tree (just a regular ancient tree) and sees it as worthy of being transformed to champion status (like finding an ancient redwood and Mord sees it as something profound and rare), converts it to champion and then it gains the spawning power/ changes shape to a dragon (or do you guys think the Shadow of the Dragon was a dragon turned plantlike?).

Serophous.9085:

When the event took place, all we were told was “If you choose Evon, God Fractal. Choose Kiel, find out why the reactor exploded.” That was it. There was no mention of the Dragons at all.

But now after seeing the result, we can figure Anet was going to tie it to the dragons no matter what, as we saw with the reactor and Scarlet.

So it basically turned to “great, we know about laylines, and not about what happened with the Gods.” And the information seemed pointless.

Too be fair, this decision probably DID guide how the rest of the story turned out, with Scarlet’s machine dealing with leyline power, finding her first notes and stuff talking about leylines, etc. If the other had won, we may be dealing with more god stuff like temples or artifacts.

Eh… both were dealing with the nature of magic. War over gifting magic vs magical explosion caused by messing with magic.

Most likely both would have led to the same Season 1-related revelation: ley lines. It was just a matter of what else we’d learn.

We were told what would have happened if Evon won in regards to Season 1 – LA would be better defended (fewer casualties), but still destroyed. Though there’d also be a difference in the interactions of Evon and Ellen – for example, the datamined voice overs for Evon’s victory showed Ellen giving up being a Lionguard and going full on pirate with the two actually making amends. And a dev hinted that Evon’s interest in the fractal was potentially religious related.

But we’re getting off-topic now.

Ehecatl.9172:

I feel you’re overlooking a big detail that separates Modremoth from the other dragons.

Modremoth’s minions are still alive. Up until now we’ve had Zhaitan who mostly corrupts dead things (No functional genitals), Jormag who corrupts the living and turns them into animated ice (No genitals), Kraalkatorrik who corrupts the living by turning them into crystal (No genitals), Primordus who corrupts inanimate objects (No genitals), and Bubbles who corrupts water (No genitals, just tentacles).

Modremoth corrupts the vegetation and twists it to his needs, but the corruption process doesn’t render the plant unable to reproduce the way the other dragons’ corruption does. He then uses the plant’s natural ability to reproduce to spawn more minions who are born corrupted by his influence. Modremoth’s minions are different than the other dragons’ because he is the only elder dragon that let’s his minions keep their reproductive capabilities after being corrupted so he can exploit it.

Sylvari have no internal sexual organs, as stated in Season 2. It’s been known since the sylvari redesigned reveal aka “sylvari week” before launch that sylvari could do the deed but they were 100% sterile.

The other dragon minions may have genitals, but being corpses, crystals, and ice would be similarly incapable of sexual reproduction.

Mordrem are also incapable of sexual reproduction. Or at least sylvari are.

This is probably the one similarity between sylvari and other dragon minions, in all honesty.

Ehecatl.9172:

I’m sure SOME soldiers wouldn’t believe it, but I doubt absolutely no one would. In fact from the perspective of a normal Tyrian it explains a lot.

But Tyrians are also used to dragon minions spouting out constant lies.

Sure, some might believe it. But the vast majority? I doubt it.

And for the Priory to specifically research sylvari knowing they’re mordrem (See Mordrem Researcher Eullo from mordrem invasions)? Or having full on groups calling out sylvari as monsters (HoT trailer)? Seems a bit far fetched unless that ends up being an isolated case and not the norm.

Calcifire.1864:

“Zhaitan will reunite you with your lost loved ones!”

Technically, that isn’t a lie. Zhaitan DID reunite them with lost loved ones, in a fashion.

it’s twisted, and obviously not a good thing for anyone who isn’t a risen, but it’s not an outright lie.

who knows, maybe the risen don’t see themselves as risen? maybe they see themselves and other risen as regular people still? maybe to them, orr is still in it’s heyday rather than the barnacle encrusted mess it is?

Was an example. But let’s use other phrases:

“Zhaitan eats gods!” – never happened

“I see in your heart that you have lost someone to Zhaitan. Someone named… Sieran. She is waiting for you now, beneath the dragon’s wings…” – sylvari couldn’t become risen, thus untrue

“The Mists are filled with lies. Zhaitan is our only chance at immortality. Serve him!” – undeath isn’t really immortality, and it’s known that there’s methods of longevity via more ‘normal’ magic (see Livia)

Main point: risen lied, a LOT. They used psychological warfare, a LOT. So do Icebrood/Sons of Svanir. So why would veterans used to this believe an obvious dragon minion (Mordrem Guard) to tell the untainted truth?

djsarcher.9263:

The Pale Tree being influenced and cultivated from seed by Ronan & Ventari, are we to assume that in the process, whether by Ventari’s magic or something else, they were able to cleanse the corruption from the tree while in seed form. Thus leading to sylvari being different to their corrupted counterparts, but similar in makeup and so vulnerable to the call? Is Mordremoth is fighting against the protective magic infused into the Sylvari by Ventari?

It would certainly make more sense if the intention of whats been said is that Mordremoth intended for the seeds to become Blighting trees, and therefore Mordrem Guard being the dragon minions, not sylvari themselves.

The Pale Tree and sylvari being ‘cleansed’ (or whatever term you wish to use) is not really questioned. Though I doubt it was Ventari and Ronan’s involvement given Malyck.

But take a look at Glint. She was still a dragon minion in everything but being less malevolent looking (bright blue instead of dark purple crystals; clear sky-based magic instead of constant thunderstorm; etc.) and still functioned like a dragon minion (still consumed magic). By comparison, one would expect the Pale Tree to be the same.

Coulter.2315:

Ah but we heard recently that Mordremoth takes corpses and clones their likeness to make minions with spawning trees (guess whats under the Pale Tree – dead Ronan and family corpses). The Pale Tree has been mashing together the likeness of Ronan and his family and pumping out her “fruit” just as designed.

Right…

But that entirely avoids what I was saying.

Pale Tree = purified Blighting Tree

Blighting Tree = corrupted <insert tree type here>

If the Blighting Trees are corrupted standard fruit trees, then the uncorrupted version of Mordrem Guard (the purified version of them being sylvari) would be fruits. Literal fruits. Things like pears and apples and oranges.

And that makes no sense to me.

BrotherNumsie.8123:

Primordus does corrupt living things. Personal Story -> Whispers Order -> Skritt lesser race storyline. Tybalt pretty much confirms this when talking about the destroyer eggs.

The mentor (doesn’t matter which order you join) only says that as a possibility. As stated in this thread, the possibility was presented when all that was seen coming from the eggs were destroyer crablings. Later on, if you rescue skritt, you see destroyer trolls and harpies coming from eggs, debunking the theory of a corrupted pregnant being and confirming the second theory the mentors bring up: a new type of minion.

Though this isn’t to say that Primordus cannot corrupt living beings. And no one, I believe, ever said he couldn’t. It was actually confirmed in an interview with GuildMag last year that 1) Primordus can indeed corrupt living beings and 2) we have not seen a confirmable case of this in-game. Though the description does match the visual effects of the grawl shaman in the volcanic fractal.

Ranael.6423:

I think Mordremoth has corrupted seeds (the one of Ronan’s cave) which are able to give life to Mordrem.

As said, no other dragon’s champions are capable of taking a piece of themselves to create new minions, nor are they capable of producing minions via sexual reproduction or other similar methods. All champions create minions in similar manners – by corrupting pre-existing materials (often bodies – be it living or dead).

Ranael.6423:

At the beginning of HOT, the only ones who are naming them as dragon minions are the Pact Soldiers who see many of their sylvari comrades turn against us.

Mordrem Researcher Eullo, from the mordrem invasions, who wasn’t present for the sylvari mass corruption, knows the sylvari’s truth.

Ranael.6423:

Some may have told things like “My master calls… death to the Pact”. So far, the news of this event have not spread to the east, but it will eventually and then those who are already angry at the plant race will be ready to hate them and convince those who were just wondering.

Why trust dragon minions? A plant-corrupting dragon corrupting plants isn’t exactly odd. Why would it be “sylvari are dragon minions!” and not “sylvari are vulnerable to Mordremoth!”?

That’s my main question. No one has provided a sufficient possibility, IMO.

Ranael.6423:

I don’t see the problem of not getting used to horror.

Not so much ‘not getting used to horror’ so much as ‘why is Anet treating this as something special and unique to Mordremoth, and not something that every dragon has done’.

BrotherNumsie.8123:

I think the one thing everyone forgets is that most of the lore information we receive is through the characters themselves in the game.

Most of what I present in this thread is either from devs or observations from the game rather than dialogues in the game.

The only dialogues in the game referred to are examples of what’s wrong (e.g., people reacting to sylvari being dragon minions).

Vesuvius.9874:

Connection1 : Scarlet, a sylvari, talked about hearing voices in her head, blew up LA and woke up Mordremoth.
Connection 2: Aerin, a sylvari, goes crazy after Mordremoth wakes up, destroys the Zephyrite fleet.
Connection 3: A lot of sylvari turn against the Pact after the Pact decides to take on Mordremoth.

How are you still confused about why people think sylvari are dragon minions?

Because a plant-corrupting dragon corrupting plant people isn’t the first thought that goes into people’s minds. The first thought is that a plant-corrupting dragon is the origin of the plant people.

Let me give you a similar situation:

Connection 1: Svanir goes mad and begins killing people, feeding magic to Jormag.
Connection 2: After Svanir’s death, a bunch of norn hear whispers and follow their instructions, feeding Jormag via Drakkar.
Connection 3: After Jormag’s awake, a huge number of norn have taken up Jormag as their totem Spirit of the Wild. These norn begin looking like standard norn, but over time their appearance turn into very clear dragon minions.

Pretty much exact same situation between norn/Jormag and sylvari/Mordremoth to the standard Tyrian – even to the Pact. So clearly, norn are icebrood lying in waiting, and Jormag’s waiting for the perfect time to call upon all of his hidden minions.

Boy, Wild-Eye Miller would have a field day with that.

glehmann.9586:

How about the Destroyer Queen? It lays eggs, and since the destroyers are literally just animated stone and magma, those eggs are literally just parts of itself that is is separating and growing into new minions.

We actually never see how those eggs are formed. They’re just placed there. The Queen never forms eggs while fighting her.

For all we know, the eggs were formed in lava pits like standard destroyers, and placed elsewhere by the Queen to trick skritt.

glehmann.9586:

Maybe there’s no pre-corruption form and they are literally plant seeds that he grew from his own plant-like body, the same way the wiki describes destroyers as being “forged from the molten heart of [Primordus]”.

That wiki quote is metaphorical. So that comparison would still make Mordremoth unique.

The selling point of Heart of Thorns is “Not the ending, but the journey.”

That, in my opinion, is the worst marketing slogan I’ve ever heard. It tells me that the ending is kittenty, and that it has no endgame.

The irony is that it is exactly the opposite of what Heart of Thorns is actually promising to do, endgame content and raids.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Sylvari have no internal sexual organs, as stated in Season 2. It’s been known since the sylvari redesigned reveal aka “sylvari week” before launch that sylvari could do the deed but they were 100% sterile.

The other dragon minions may have genitals, but being corpses, crystals, and ice would be similarly incapable of sexual reproduction.

Mordrem are also incapable of sexual reproduction. Or at least sylvari are.

This is probably the one similarity between sylvari and other dragon minions, in all honesty.

I didn’t say the Sylvari can reproduce, the Pale Tree can. The Pale Tree/Blighted Trees are plants that have been corrupted and had their still intact reproductive abilities twisted to mass produce Modrem instead of natural seeds to make more trees.

Modremoth functions differently from Jormag and Kraalkatorrik who transform the living into animated substances like ice and crystal. He’s more along the lines of Zhaitan and Primordus as he corrupts what is already there while retaining it’s general state of matter. Corpses with Zhaitan and stone with Primordus. But unlike Zhaitan and Primordus Modremoth’s domain is plant life, which means the corrupted plants he takes control of are able to reproduce like normal plants where as corpses and rocks obviously can’t.

So Modremoth is twisting the way the plants normally reproduce to make more minions. Using the very nature of life to further his own goals. Sounds like a form of corruption to me.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Coulter.2315:

Ah but we heard recently that Mordremoth takes corpses and clones their likeness to make minions with spawning trees (guess whats under the Pale Tree – dead Ronan and family corpses). The Pale Tree has been mashing together the likeness of Ronan and his family and pumping out her “fruit” just as designed.

Right…

But that entirely avoids what I was saying.

Pale Tree = purified Blighting Tree

Blighting Tree = corrupted <insert tree type here>

If the Blighting Trees are corrupted standard fruit trees, then the uncorrupted version of Mordrem Guard (the purified version of them being sylvari) would be fruits. Literal fruits. Things like pears and apples and oranges.

And that makes no sense to me.

But every dragon minion is just an inanimate object given life; hot rocks, corpses, corpses with crystals in them, cold corpses and fruit ^^

Sure there is a corpse motif but given Primordus we know prior sentience is not required – fruit isn’t more odd than rocks (tbh I’d say its less odd).

Ehecatl.9172:

I didn’t say the Sylvari can reproduce, the Pale Tree can. The Pale Tree/Blighted Trees are plants that have been corrupted and had their still intact reproductive abilities twisted to mass produce Modrem instead of natural seeds to make more trees.

Sylvari and Mordrem Guard are the ‘fruit’ of the Pale Tree/Blighting Trees, so by your logic, if I’m understanding your logic, they would eventually become their own Pale Tree/Blighting Tree and, in turn, become capable of reproduction – as that’s what fruits effectively are: seeds.

But that would be extremely weird, as it would mean that every one of Mordremoth’s minions could become minion factories if given time.

Which once more makes Mordremoth completely different than the other Elder Dragons – the entire point of my argument for point 1 and 1.5 – for no reason other than narrative drama of ‘player race = dragon minions’ despite the fact that it contradicts everything else (basic minions have less magic put into them thus are weaker and less intelligent – per Magic Sucks PS instance).

Coulter.2315:

But every dragon minion is just an inanimate object given life; hot rocks, corpses, corpses with crystals in them, cold corpses and fruit ^^

Sure there is a corpse motif but given Primordus we know prior sentience is not required – fruit isn’t more odd than rocks (tbh I’d say its less odd).

I’d say it is more odd – and entirely odd – because of the situation of matter quantities and mass. A pear is vastly different not just in shape and mobility to sylvari, but also in size and weight.

Also, Kralkatorrik and Jormag corrupt living beings, not (just) corpses.

But this, once more, doesn’t take into account the crux of my issue.

Why is Mordremoth the oddball Elder Dragon capable of things no other dragon is capable of, breaking every consistency and rule we’ve been established about the Elder Dragons, just for the apparent sake of the plot point of sylvari (players) are dragon minions and are hated by everyone.

It’s as bad as the plots around Scarlet… It’s just another form of the Sue tropes.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Sylvari and Mordrem Guard are the ‘fruit’ of the Pale Tree/Blighting Trees, so by your logic, if I’m understanding your logic, they would eventually become their own Pale Tree/Blighting Tree and, in turn, become capable of reproduction – as that’s what fruits effectively are: seeds.

But that would be extremely weird, as it would mean that every one of Mordremoth’s minions could become minion factories if given time.

Which once more makes Mordremoth completely different than the other Elder Dragons – the entire point of my argument for point 1 and 1.5 – for no reason other than narrative drama of ‘player race = dragon minions’ despite the fact that it contradicts everything else (basic minions have less magic put into them thus are weaker and less intelligent – per Magic Sucks PS instance).

Yes, the Sylvari and Modrem are fruit. But they are CORRUPTED fruit. Just like Primordus takes rocks and turns them into animated creatures that look like various animals Mordremoth is corrupting these plants so the fruit they produce are twisted into a humanoid shape.

They don’t necessarily need to still act like fruit and carry the ability to grow more trees, though there’s no reason they couldn’t given how long it took to grow the Pale Tree in comparison to how long Sylvari have been dying, but they are corrupted fruit. It’s entirely possible that with the act of twisting the plant’s ability to bare fruit into the ability to bare Modrem the corrupted “fruit” can no longer grow into new trees.

As for your final point, we knew Modremoth was going to be different the second we learned his domain. He controls a domain of living beings. Plants are inherently different from ice, crystals, rocks, or corpses and so wouldn’t have the same limitations that these non-living substances have. The plants are alive.

As for him being different making him a “sue”, I just disagree. The Elder Dragons can, and frankly should, have different abilities and motifs about them to keep them interesting. Jormag is the only dragon that is focusing most of his attention on corrupting living individuals and forming religious cults and that makes him a far more interesting dragon to me than Primordus or Kraalkatorrik who just use mineral-based fodder. Up until now Zhaitan was the only dragon who didn’t glass his minions over with some other substance and kept them as fleshy biological creations. Primordus as far as I know is the only dragon that is actively making minions out of inanimate objects.

Likewise Modremoth’s domain are plants and the one thing all plants do is grow. I really don’t see a problem with Modremoth using this one universal plant trait to his advantage by growing his army.

Let it be. I guess the plot in GW2 will eventually just like the Lost or X-Files tv series full of holes and contradictions.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Coulter.2315:

But every dragon minion is just an inanimate object given life; hot rocks, corpses, corpses with crystals in them, cold corpses and fruit ^^

Sure there is a corpse motif but given Primordus we know prior sentience is not required – fruit isn’t more odd than rocks (tbh I’d say its less odd).

I’d say it is more odd – and entirely odd – because of the situation of matter quantities and mass. A pear is vastly different not just in shape and mobility to sylvari, but also in size and weight.

Also, Kralkatorrik and Jormag corrupt living beings, not (just) corpses.

But this, once more, doesn’t take into account the crux of my issue.

Why is Mordremoth the oddball Elder Dragon capable of things no other dragon is capable of, breaking every consistency and rule we’ve been established about the Elder Dragons, just for the apparent sake of the plot point of sylvari (players) are dragon minions and are hated by everyone.

It’s as bad as the plots around Scarlet… It’s just another form of the Sue tropes.

We all agree Mordremoth is different to Zhaitan, Jormag and Kralk BUT seems very similar to Primordus. I think fruit → sylvari is just the same as rock → destroyer. Tree makes fruit, corrupted tree makes minions.

Mordremoth isn’t causing a pear to turn into a sylvari he is corrupting a pear tree and it then creates sylvari instead of pears.

The lack of conservation of mass is shared by all dragons though (what did the Mouth of Zhaitan used to be or how do you get the skeleton of a Royal Orrian to turn into a giant eye while conserving mass? Primordus’ spawners don’t shrink as they pump out rock eggs.) Clearly some magic is being used to ignore those naughty physics.

Ok, Glint used to be a dragon champion so how does lore explain the fact that she has eggs? Or is this why Glint’s egg is so important because it explains how the pale tree is also able to spawn Sylvari? I hope we get answers in HoT.