Guild Wars 2

Anyone have any theories on how each elder dragon got the abilities it has? Primordious over fire/rock, Kralk over crystal/lightning, zhaitan over undeath, ect?

Some people have theorized that they attune to whatever elements they are closest by upon awakening, but this falls short in many instances. The most likely thing is that sometime looooooooooong before any recorded history the Elder Dragons were created in a way that attuned them to the elements they are attuned to, and the rest is history. The problem is that it is all so far back that there is really nothing on it. Heck we’re still struggling with getting information from 4,000 years ago in game, let alone the 10,000+ that the ED’s have been around.

Do you think it happened at the same time they became what that are now or possibly something different each time they wake up?

I personally believe the dragons are actually just elementals. Very very powerful elementals, but elementals. So they are basically raw magic that bound together and developed a consciousness. And they are incredibly old, they had tons of time to absorb enormous amounts of additional magical energy, making them what they are today.

I’m speculating that Tyria has always been a dragon-dominated world, from its very birth and dawn. I can either see the Elder Dragons as guardians of the land and masters of the elements who either grew envious of each other and the life they were charged to defend and guide, or more powerful dragons or dragon lords that survived a (civil) war that might’ve brought an end to the Age of Dragons: the six (or more) we know of won by consuming, corrupting (I think Glint or Glaust was corrupted by Kralkatorrik eons ago), or destroying their kin and when they ran out of food – in other words; they stripped Tyria of all life – they went to hibernate for the first time.

In either case, I see it possible the fall of these could-be-once-noble dragons is connected to either their own lust for power, jealousy/envy, or the influence of demonic entities corrupting them. For instance, we know that imps are demonic in origins, are also element-related, and they become more powerful by consuming (adequate elemental) magic. What if such uber-imp lords (even if it sounds funny) invaded and took control of the bodies of powerful draconic beings?

How the Elder Dragons became attuned to certain elements likely has to do with their origins – if not how they themselves were born/made, then how/why they became so threatening as they are now.

Sadly, this means we hold absolutely no indication of any clue to this. Personally, I hope it remains this way – something so old and powerful should keep its origins unknown, to continue giving it a sense of epicness which hopefully the other five Elder Dragons will restore after Zhaitan’s pitiful fall from tower (ba dum tsh – yeah, cheesy I know). It will hopefully keep things from falling into (pre-DC?) ME3 domain with how the origins of the Reaper was pitifully silly. And it’s good to have at least one thing kept guessing at.

I have two theories going personally.

First theory is that they’re coalesced magic given physical form and a sapient mind. This is mainly divulged from how they consume magic – creatures tend to consume what they are in order to stay alive. Just as how humans eat fiber, protein, and so forth; the Elder Dragons in turn would eat magic to maintain their magical bodies, and with magic being the origin of their bodies, wouldn’t need more physical things to maintain their body. This would have occured through the supposed natural ever-increasing magic of Tyria – since the Elder Dragons consume all magic in the world every cycle, the magic has to reform from somewhere. So I suspect that the Elder Dragons were made when there was nothing to consume magic, but it still kept growing, until it got to such a point where it began to take shape and the ability to corrupt, twist, and consume (literally and metaphorically) other things; their intelligence came from corrupting living beings, and learning all they knew – at first they would have been mindless beings of magic, but upon first corrupting a living being, they gained knowledge and mind, and as they corrupted more and more, their knowledge, personality, and so forth all grew, encompassing all they “consumed.”

This would mean that Primordus, who seems intent to kill rather than corrupt living beings based off of my observation, would be the most mindless of all Elder Dragons – the least strategic of them, too.

My second theory uses something Thalador mentioned already: Imps.

Imps, as seen via one of the hearts in Lornar’s Pass, grow as they consume magic of their element. Tkittenence of an imp – which looks not dissimilar to a magical egg – becomes attuned to the first elemental magic introduced to it, and grows as more of the same element is given – but dies when a different element is given.

Then take note of the imps’ appearance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/5/56/Fire_Imp.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/88/Ice_Imp.jpg

Just two such imps. I’d say they look fairly similar in structure to this, wouldn’t you?

My second theory is that they’re basically the same kind of demon that imps are, but they’ve consumed so much magic over the eons that they have grown to immense proportions, where the world cannot sustain them for long periods of time anymore – forcing them to go into hibernation.

My own personal theory comes from their being two sets of 3 elder dragons. We know for a fact that Primordus chooses not to corrupt living beings, and from the description of the DSD we can state that it seems he creates his own minions instead of corrupting them as well. This may or may not be true, depending on whether there are any connections between the DSD and Krait. I also theorize that Mordremoth creates his own minions from plants rather than corrupting already sapient beings, but this is speculation and may be proven wrong depending on how true Konig’s theory on the connection between the Nightmare Court and Mordremoth is. Something we will have to wait and see about as more knowledge is brought forward.

My personal theory sits around 3 elder dragons having existed in a time before there was sentient life on Tyria (Primordus, DSD, Mordremoth). Most of what existed was land, water, and plant life. These 3 elements were able to be harnessed by the 3 Elder Dragons that were created first and they were able to wage war against each other this way. Here there is a little bit of a slip, somehow sentient life and magic would have had to grow in Tyria to a great enough scale for 3 more elder dragons to be created. My theory is that magic waned and the original 3 Elder Dragons went into slumber and slept too long, allowing the land to start to be cleansed either naturally, or through corruption fighting corruption. Eventually life grew and so did magic, and the original Elder Dragons did not know how they were created, so they slept longer than they should have allowing magic to grow to the point of creating more Elder Dragons (Jormag, Kralkatorrik, Zhaitan). These Elder Dragons were able to harness the lives of sentient or sapient beings whereas the first Elder Dragons were unable to because of their inability to comprehend anything other than the base elements that they worked with. It is still a growing theory, some iterations have the first 3 Elder Dragons being the actual creators of Tyria, but as per some comments presented, there seems to always be a 1 for 1 when it comes to material used to make their minions.

My theory is that all dragons and drakes are powerful elementals or imps. Some drakes are attuned to elements as well. (River- Air, Ice – Water, Salamander- Fire), so it would really depend on what kind of magic they devour that makes them attuned to a certain element.

My personal theory is similar to Konig’s first. I think the dragons are the way Tyria cleans itself when there is so much magic around that it becomes dangerous (like Final Fantasy 7 weapons, that were the planet response to big threats), so the dragons keep the cycle consuming magic. In fact I think it may be dangerous to kill them as longterm it could have terrible consequences. It’s true that their rampage endangers all living beings, but I think if we’re going to kill them all, someone should start to study the consequences of this and how it could be solved without needing more Elder Dragons.