Guild Wars 2

What are some ways we know about how dragons are corrupting living things?

Well, they don’t all corrupt living things. Zhaitan corrupts corpses by turning them into undead. Kralkatorrik corrupts everything by turning it into crystal. Jormag corrupts ice and living things by turning them into evil ice. Primordus seems to corrupt stone and lava. And Bubbles, who knows – maybe he only corrupts water?

That’s a very broad question. There are a lot of different methods used by each dragon, but I’ll list some ways.

Zhaitan doesn’t really corrupt living things, only corpses and apparently water and earth. There are instances of living beings showing signs of Zhaitan’s corruption, but that was from a specific artifact.

When Kralkatorrik created the Dragonbrand, it was described that his breath and presence crystallized living creatures below and turned them in to branded. I can’t recall any instances of a creature becoming branded within the game, but the Sentinels say that some of them have been turned into branded, and I would guess that happens when a dragon champion forcibly corrupts them.

Jormag corrupts many Sons of Svanir by offering them power—if they accept, they become Icebrood. Also, Svanir shamans can preform a ritual that forcibly transforms people into Icebrood, and certain artifacts and powers can instantaneously cause corruption. Other Icebrood are created by being frozen in corrupted ice, and are slowly transformed.

Primordus doesn’t corrupt living things, and we’ve never encountered a minion of the DSD.

Excelliate.7914:

That’s a very broad question.

This to the Nth degree.

Every Elder Dragon seems to hold a “preferred” means of corruption, but their magic in of itself is corruptive thus they’re seen corrupting indirectly (such as through the amulets in the charr lvl 20-30 storyline, or the Sanguinary Blade in Priory lvl 30-40 storyline).

As Excelliate said, Zhaitan corrupts only corpses – though as mentioned there are objects infused with his corruption which has corrupted living beings (such as Kellach) as well as killed-then-corrupted beings (such as what those aforementioned amulets do). How Zhaitan corrupts seems to be, based on one of the personal story missions, a form of magic radiation – and depending on the amount of corruptive magic used on the corpse, they could be weak mindless risen, or risen with entrapped souls. He can even corrupt mangled corpses that have been sewn together (the Risen Abominations – and possibly the Risen Knights, Eyes of Zhaitan, and dragon champions like Tequatl).

Jormag corrupts mentally – he and his champions attack and entice with promises of power, slowly winning them over to his own side before their bodies slowly become ice overtime. That’s his primary means – as Excelliate mentioned, Svanir/Icebrood shamans also channel Jormag’s power to forcibly corrupt others in a similar manner as the objects infused with Zhaitan’s corruption, and Jormag’s frozen blood in the Sanguinary Blade is also corruptive – as is his ice when it imprisons creatures.

Kralkatorrik corrupts physically – primarily via his breath. An interesting thing to note is that he either cannot or simply does not corrupt spirits (they’re the one thing left untouched by the Dragonbrand’s creation, though water and Lightning Elementals, though corrupted, appear normal too). Like above, creatures can be imprisoned in crystals created by dragon champions/the Dragonbrand itself and corrupted into Branded that way. To my knowledge there’s no objects which corrupt due to being infused with Kralkatorrik’s corruptive ability.

Primordus doesn’t corrupt living beings at all – its unknown whether its because he doesn’t want to (my bet) or that he simply can’t. All actions and motivations of his minions indicate that Primordus just simply wants to wipe out all organic life, so I’m inclined to say he doesn’t view living beings worthy, just as Jormag focuses on those who seek power to come to him. He is said to corrupt by his breath just like Kralkatorrik, however Destroyers can be created in pools of lava by his champions – slowly forming over time. The “destroyer eggs” seen in the skritt racial sympathy storyline seem to be small individual mobile versions of this (perhaps created to be taken into the enemies’ territory Trojan Horse style).

Based on the one line about the deep sea dragon from the Movement of the World, the DSD corrupts water only – though since we know next to nothing about it, it’s impossible to make any conclusion.

The sixth Elder Dragon, possibly named Mordremoth, based on my research I posted in another thread now buried seems to corrupt primarily (if not solely directly) plantlife – and via inflicting pain. If I’m correct, then there’d also be large plants which can engulf targets to corrupt, just like Jormag’s ice or Kralkatorrik’s crystals can do.

I always thought that the Sons of Svanir just followed Svanir’s logic, and Jormag was cool with it for some reason or other.

And how do we not know that the DSD dragon corrupts -through- water, instead of just water? I mean, water’s down there, should be easy enough to get in contact with the other fishies/butterflyfishpeople/snakemen/quaggans. We could be seein’ minions of the Lovecraftian variety arise from the deeps.

Well, that’s the question. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Bubbles. Is he playing it cool? Is he off getting hot and tentacley with Cantha? Busy conquering the Quaggan Empire of Blood? Who knows.

Wouldn’t it be funny if he/she turns out to be a gigantic Quaggan?

Bubbles’ method of corruption turns out to be making things cute and adorable. All hope is soon lost.