Guild Wars 2

Joke title aside, are they?

This is a question that’s been nagging at me increasingly lately. We know that Primordus corrupts fire and stone and the Dwarves apparently thought the best way to fight the Destroyers was to… turn themselves into stone? Which, in retrospect, seems like trying to fight Mordremoth by turning yourself into a ficus or Zhaitan by killing yourself. Just strikes me as a bad idea all over.

The one thing that sticks out though is that the Rite of the Great Dwarf was a legacy from the previous rise of the dragons, so it wouldn’t make much sense for the Dwarves to retain a ritual that made them vulnerable to dragon corruption, especially when it’s noted to be a weapon against the Destroyers. So was the Rite more than just a means to make the Dwarves more physically resilient against Destroyers, but also a way to safeguard against corruption by Primordus? Because if the Rite confers no protection against corruption, then I’m not seeing how turning yourself to stone and going to fight Primordus ends in extinction, rather than corruption.

“Turn yourself into a ficus”
It’s not like we didn’t have plenty of plant people fighting Mordremoth. Perhaps the ritual, in focusing the Dwarves into a sort of unified group, grants a protection similar to that of the Dream?

Primordus, I would say, is fire more than earth. His minions are living magma for the most part. No generic earth elementals in the ranks.

The dwarves turning themselves into stone gives two benefits to fighting that. The first, is they are even more resilient. The second, short of extreme circumstances, stone does not burn. So fighting a fire-themed dragon with a stalwart army of fireproof soldiers isn’t that bad an idea.

The only rocks used in making destroyers are volcanic rocks like obsidian – aka cooled lava.

As we saw in GW1, dwarves made of stone were actually stronger against destroyers. Unlike destroyers that were hardened lava, the dwarves turned themselves to cold stone, with an almost icy sheen to their appearance.

The Rite of the Great Dwarf does seem to create a structure that mirrors dragon minions, which is an interesting situation that has yet to be answered. But the ghosts of the Foefire seem the same – they “share Adelbern’s hatred” and most of them seem mindless except for higher ranking individuals, and the higher ranked they appear, the more intelligent they seem (just like dragon minions). Unlike dragon minions, all stone dwarves seem equally intelligent – much like the Pale Tree’s sylvari, whom are unique from other mordrem (and even other sylvari – e.g., Malyck) in the connection to the Dream (only Mordremoth, the Pale Tree, and the White Stag are known to have a connection to the Dream – it is via the Dream that Mordremoth enters the minds of sylvari, but by all indication no other mordrem is tied to the Dream, as it is an empathetic link allowing sylvari to sense one another – the effectiveness of this sensing tied to how strong their link to the Dream is – this is why some chose to become Soundless, or others who don’t become Soundless still isolate themselves, like Amaranda the Lonesome) as well as in their intelligence.

If the dwarves end up vulnerable to corruption, I’d imagine it to be Jormag’s given the cold stone/icy sheen aspect of their appearance. Not to mention that the dwarves are known to have as much interaction with Jormag than with Primordus (if not more so – see Sanguinary Blade).