Guild Wars 2

Before the Sylvari were affected to become Mordrem Guards, we don’t see any Mordrem Guards or something similar. It looks like that they were not Mordremoth’ original design for minions. The Pale Tree made the Sylvari and Mordremoth liked her design, not just turned them into Mordrem Guards. It also created more powerful commanders based on the Sylvari.

I think that’s pretty much it.

Similarly, we didn’t see any frog-shaped mordrem until HoT, suggesting that the Itzel and Nuhoch modrem are something Mordremoth learned to make more recently, after his original modrem killed / captured some.

Mordremoth – like Primordus – doesn’t use original concepts for its minions but create mockeries of already living beings. The first wave of minions on both sides likely resemble ancient races (husks do have a similarity to jotun).

As for the mordrem guard, they weren’t created by Mordremoth and in general they don’t seem to be ‘truly’ corrupted – Mordremoth messed with their minds, but as we see in Buried Insight’s side achievement, this isn’t the same as the will-enslaving corruption all dragons use. There’s still some free will in the Mordrem Guard, meaning that given the right environment they can get close to being how they were originally. Their appearance change seems no different than what Canach and Caithe went through – all sylvari can have their appearance drastically changed if they undergo the right kind of psychological stress and personality changes.

So no, mordrem guards are not “Mordremoth’s original design” in the least.

Something that just occurred to me on this subject – if mordrem are all mockeries of the living creature Modremoth encounters, why are there none based on the races that were around the last time the dragons awoke? Surely Mordremoth must have encountered at least some mursaat, seers, dwarves, forgotten, or jotun back then, yet he hasn’t used them. Has he forgotten them as he slept? Does he just use the races he encouters against them selves as a bit of a mind-game against them? Or are the current races somehow better for him to copy?

I think that’s what the thrashers and husks are meant to be.

Similarly, I think that the GW1 destroyers could be attributed to such too – the Destroyer of Thoughts has a very mursaat-ish shape, though greatly altered. And this is why we have not only the name difference (in GW1, we didn’t know the races that were being copied), but now the only destroyers we see are of trolls, harpies, and crabs – modern races.

It’s also possible that Mordremoth had no ancient-race minions because they were all wiped out, and Mordy didn’t bother making more of the ancient races, but instead immediately made some of newer races (trolls, teragriffs (colocals), etc.). Mordremoth didn’t have a dragon champion that survived since ancient times like the other four dragons we’ve seen, of which only three are ‘mockery minion’ dragons (Primordus). With no equivalent of The Great Destroyer, it likely didn’t have interest of making ancient race copies.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordremoth – like Primordus – doesn’t use original concepts for its minions but create mockeries of already living beings. The first wave of minions on both sides likely resemble ancient races (husks do have a similarity to jotun).

As for the mordrem guard, they weren’t created by Mordremoth and in general they don’t seem to be ‘truly’ corrupted – Mordremoth messed with their minds, but as we see in Buried Insight’s side achievement, this isn’t the same as the will-enslaving corruption all dragons use. There’s still some free will in the Mordrem Guard, meaning that given the right environment they can get close to being how they were originally. Their appearance change seems no different than what Canach and Caithe went through – all sylvari can have their appearance drastically changed if they undergo the right kind of psychological stress and personality changes.

So no, mordrem guards are not “Mordremoth’s original design” in the least.

Maybe because Mordremoth wanted to keep their intelligence as more powerful minions. And it doesn’t have the ability to corrupt beings with their intelligence intact like Kralkatorrik or Zhaitan.

Stitch.1794:

Something that just occurred to me on this subject – if mordrem are all mockeries of the living creature Modremoth encounters, why are there none based on the races that were around the last time the dragons awoke? Surely Mordremoth must have encountered at least some mursaat, seers, dwarves, forgotten, or jotun back then, yet he hasn’t used them. Has he forgotten them as he slept? Does he just use the races he encouters against them selves as a bit of a mind-game against them? Or are the current races somehow better for him to copy?

Stavemaster Adryn seems to have been molded into something that looks an awful lot like a seer. Even wields that Seer’s staff.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Maybe because Mordremoth wanted to keep their intelligence as more powerful minions. And it doesn’t have the ability to corrupt beings with their intelligence intact like Kralkatorrik or Zhaitan.

More likely that the sylvari still were protected by the Dream with their state of ‘they die if corruption touches them’ that even Mordremoth could not (fully) bypass. We still don’t know the source of this protection, after all (and no, it isn’t necessarily because they’re dragon minions – we already see at minimum two cases of beings corrupted by multiple dragon corruptions).

As to intelligence, given all examples: dragon minions made from ‘scratch’ like mordrem and destroyers seem to be mindless, while dragon minions which are ‘corrupted former living beings’ (whether the being is dead or alive at the time of corruption) results in mostly mindless (but not fully). The exception are, of course, dragon lieutenants and champions, which become more intelligent and powerful the more corrupted magic they have.

Since we know that Primordus can corrupt living beings, and we know that Kralkatorrik, Jormag, and Zhaitan can corrupt landscapes/elements (and in the former two, turn those into minions), it’s likely that this separation of corruption metholody is not a case of ‘cannot’ but ‘does not’.

Of course, this begs the question of why sylvari are so smart. But the reason why Mordrem Guard are unique is because sylvari are. Sadly, like all other important things, ArenaNet has not devulged the most important question of the Heart of Thorns story – what makes sylvari unique.

And, of course, the sylvari uniqueness is why I still say ArenaNet’s ‘reveal’ that they’re dragon minions makes no sense and contradicts all known lore – because, until we get a proper explanation (and possibly even with that explanation), they do contradict all known lore about dragon minions and, therefore, make no sense.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Stavemaster Adryn seems to have been molded into something that looks an awful lot like a seer. Even wields that Seer’s staff.

However, Adryn is a Mordrem Guard, which makes him a former sylvari. His dialogue implies he was a Nightmare Courtier before falling to Mordremoth’s call though.

Which is a bit interesting, that he would still make calls for us to ‘gaze into Nightmare’ even when he now serves Mordremoth.

He was also named “Nightmare Seer” on his character sheet. A shame they cut out what they planned to do about the Mordrem Commanders, because I was really interested in what difference it could make for a Mordrem Guard to be a former Nightmare Courtier.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

However, Adryn is a Mordrem Guard, which makes him a former sylvari. His dialogue implies he was a Nightmare Courtier before falling to Mordremoth’s call though.

Which is a bit interesting, that he would still make calls for us to ‘gaze into Nightmare’ even when he now serves Mordremoth.

Being Mordrem Guard doesn’t mean they are all former Sylvari. We saw that Mordremoth could keep make these once he took control of the sylvari.

The Modrem Guard Commanders are mostly new creation based on the Sylvari.

Mordrem Guard by definition are sylvari who took on Mordremoth’s call.

The rest are just mordrem, who are also far more mindless.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordrem Guard by definition are sylvari who took on Mordremoth’s call.

The rest are just mordrem, who are also far more mindless.

But obviously that Mordremoth learned how to make Modrem Guard or improve them after he took control of these.

Both in the trailer and in the game, Modremoth was able to clone a new one after the first one is slain. Those three Modrem Guard Commanders are mostly likely improved creation of the dragon.

He can make new bodies, but all indications point that he’s just transferring their mind, not making new intelligent minions, and this is only attributed to the Mordrem Commanders.

The trailer shouldn’t be taken as anything close to canon, since it was outsourced with a lot of creative license given to the makers (such as the ‘vine monster’ at the end being 100% made up by the trailer makers, not ArenaNet).

I don’t think it’s true that Mordremoth never creates unique minions. The Vinetooths, for instance, are believed to be custom-made for fighting Exalted – their shape has similarities to some other things we’ve seen, but the Vinetooth as a whole is new.

I think Mordremoth’s usual strategy is to make copies because it’s more convenient. When he uses a corpse or captive as the basis for creating a new minion line, the new minions appear to receive the knowledge, including fighting skills, of the original. If the fighting instincts of your new line of minions were formed to go with a particular body, then it’s probably more efficient for them to keep that body rather than giving them an entirely new body that will require new “software” to operate. So the mordrem dinosaurs and hylek are virtually identical to the originals because that’s simply easier than creating something entirely new and teaching it how to fight.

Thrashers and Leechers, on the other hand, have relatively simple fighting styles that probably don’t require much in the way of ‘programming’, so thy may be an original creation (of course, they could also be corrupted forms of the plant creatures that were originally native to the Maguuma, or they may be the result of a series of refinements on the base form of a Seer or Forgotten). The Vinetooths are more complicated (albeit probably using terragriffs as the starting template), but their specialised role might justify the additional effort in ‘programming’.

TL;DR: The majority of Mordremoth’s creations might be ‘mockeries’ not because Mordremoth is incapable of original creations, but because copying is usually more efficient.

I was speaking more in generalities when I mentioned that “Mordremoth – like Primordus – doesn’t use original concepts for its minions but create mockeries of already living beings.”

In the same sense that we say that Zhaitan doesn’t corrupt living beings – he certainly is capable and we see him do it, but 99.99% of the time he’s corrupting corpses.

Vinetooths are more the exception than the rule, like Kellach. It proves that such is capable, but the lack of such being done also proves that it isn’t done often enough to be considered the norm. (In the entire game there are ~8 Vinetooths – the one which killed Eir, the Prime, the hero challenge, and 5 Veteran spawns across the eastern half of Auric Basin (underneath Northwatch, western entrance to Vinetooth Den, in a cave just east of Eastwatch, at the southern Eastwatch pylon, and near the wiped out Nuhoch village towards the exit to Tangled Depths).

The most dangerous Mordrem Guard are the commanders, specially created to be the jungle dragon’s elite fighters. There are three unique commanders active in Maguuma, each with its own individual look, weaponry, and set of terrifying magical attacks. Worst of all for Pact forces, Mordremoth has an inexhaustible supply of all three Mordrem Guard commanders; when one falls in battle, the jungle dragon simply creates a new one with the same look, same name, and same deadly abilities as the one it replaced.

The commanders were created, not transformed.

Except that it is explicitly stated in-game that Diarmid was a sylvari.

And as we’ve been told, game trumps external lore, even blog posts.

Furthermore, being specially created for a purpose does not necessarily mean being created out of whole cloth. Zojja and Logan would probably have been used to make commanders if we hadn’t rescued them too… yes, the copies we fought weren’t that strong, but they hadn’t been perfected and in the case of Zojja’s at least, were actively resisting Mordremoth.