Guild Wars 2

What is canon for Modremoths appearance? HOT media shows 3 different looks and the wiki seems to confuse the mouth of mordremoth with the dragon itself. To the best of my knowledge, the game hasn’t explained what the mouth of Modremoths is and just what exactly it is connected to. What part of Modremoth is that giant tree in Dragon Stand? I understand the HOT trailer is NOT canon which is too bad because that vine dragon was the coolest.
Canach at one point says they have been like fleas on his back which I thought was a great descriptor. We see rivers of vines in dragon stand and Verdant Brink and wouldn’t that be cool if that was actually Mordremoths body, spanning 4 maps? But on the Ley energy map, we see Mordremoth is in his corner making a signature no bigger than Tarir or Rata Novus. Considering how out of date that map is, could he have become bigger since then?
Also it is said the tendrils that don’t move are part of Modremoth itself and we’ve seen them as far as The Iron Marches.
So is Mordremoth just a writhing pile of vines? Is he whatever he wanted us to see? Hence why we can only kill him in his mind?

After I played through the story I was left with the impression that Mordremoth was all of the vines, so like you pointed out we could only kill him in his mind. I assume that the map pointing to him is pointing to his core where the energy was at the highest concentration.

As far as i could work out, it is a physical extension of him, much like the vines which grow from him or perhaps more so since it appears to be more the core part of his body which would act as a biological mouth.

Whatever he fully looks like could prob never fully be mapped since he is so integrally part of the jungle and has so many extensions of himself.

Matt H.6142:

What is canon for Modremoths appearance? HOT media shows 3 different looks and the wiki seems to confuse the mouth of mordremoth with the dragon itself. To the best of my knowledge, the game hasn’t explained what the mouth of Modremoths is and just what exactly it is connected to.

The wiki doesn’t confuse anything, the Mouth of Mordremoth is exactly what it says it is, the physical mouth (and head and most of it’s body) of Mordremoth. This is not directly stated in game, but strongly hinted by lines suggesting that Hearts and Minds takes place during the end of the Dragon’s Stand meta event. Mordremoth is attacked phyiscally and mentally at the same time.
Now I don’t think the Mouth is all of Mordremoth. We never see were he ends, so I asume he is actually rooted in the ground. Kinda like those piranha plants from Mario. That’s how imagine it anyway. That root would also be the starting point of all the vines we see everywhere, so they are also part of Mordy’s physical body, or atleast spawn from that. It is said he can rebuild himself from these corrupting vines, so I guess it’s fair to say they are connected to his body.

In a world where we’ve seen a dragon’s mouth can be a separate entity from the dragon, (see Mouth of Zhaitan) I wouldn’t call a mouth the dragon itself. It’s a curious choice of words if it is the dragon. Why not call it the head of Mordremoth, or simply Mordremoth? Perhaps then the fight in the dream should have been called the mind of Mordremoth. Thoughts?

The canon is, essentially, that Mordremoth doesn’t have a set appearance. They’ve made it clear by the end of the expansion that the dragon’s a creature of mind, with any given body only being ‘the dragon itself’ insofar as the dragon needs one to physically exist. What that body actually is, though, doesn’t seem to matter particularly much.

You’re right that the name of the Mouth would, by itself, be insufficient to declare it as what passes for Mordremoth’s main body. The much more persuasive reasons are: A.) it shares Mordremoth’s voice actor, literally speaking with the dragon’s voice; B.) It talks of itself as Mordremoth does, and never mentions any claptrap about ‘the dragon’ in third person or a master of any sort (unlike the Mouths of Zhaitan, and any dragon minion, really); C.) Other NPCs, particularly Laranthir, speak of it as Mordremoth, or at least Mordremoth’s body; and D.) A shadow in its form seems to be the closest thing to a true form that the mind of Mordremoth, the real dragon, has- it shows up behind the mob named Mordremoth that you face in the final battle, and around Trahearne’s body in the final sequence. That said, the Mouth is essentially only the thing, or the core of the thing, that Mordremoth happens to inhabit. It’s been noted already that many, maybe most or all, of the tendrils are tied to the same contiguous form, and apparently the dragon could’ve regrown itself from any of them, or from Trahearne once we broke its mental hold on that continent-spanning body.

(Unfortunately, the wiki is appallingly incomplete regarding the dialogue around Dragon’s Stand, but it’s not hard to find if you have the time- the Mouth’s lines are impossible to miss, and will be recorded in your dialogue box is peruse later. Laranthir is just before the Mouth fight at the end of center lane, and has different dialogue before and after the battle, as well as before and after the first time you finish the story instance. I believe other Pact NPCs in the other lanes have the same dialogue, but I’m not certain.)

As for the other ‘form’ Mordremoth has, the aforementioned mob we fight- well, it’s not to clear what that is, but it doesn’t seem to be Mordremoth’s ‘actual’ self either. The shadow-Mouth hovers around it like a possessing spirit, and even exists in multiple copies during the massive AoE attack, and I’m told that there’s an actual brain beneath the arena, which I would guess is a much more likely candidate for how Mordremoth exists within the Dream. Killing it also didn’t seem to kill Mordremoth as much as it broke Mordremoth’s connection to its big body, or maybe broke the version of its mind that existed within that body. I think our obese lizard friend was just a manifestation Mordremoth made to fight us on the terms we’d set, no different, and no more the dragon’s true self, than any of the lesser bosses it’d imagined up to fight us first.

Matt H.6142:

In a world where we’ve seen a dragon’s mouth can be a separate entity from the dragon, (see Mouth of Zhaitan) I wouldn’t call a mouth the dragon itself. It’s a curious choice of words if it is the dragon. Why not call it the head of Mordremoth, or simply Mordremoth? Perhaps then the fight in the dream should have been called the mind of Mordremoth. Thoughts?

Mouth is more accurate than head simply because it’s main feature/purpose is to “feed” on leyline energy. Mouth describes that function better. They don’t call it Mordremoth because the entity is so widespread, that destroying an appendage like the mouth, hinders the creature, but does not destroy. It appears to have evolved to become a creature of the mind, hence why it can re-grow from mentally seeding corruption in Trahearne.

Mordremoth is so far the most unique dragon encountered, since it doesn’t fit what we believe to be a conventional form. It’s not always easy to grasp how something can be so alien. To me, that makes Mordremoth much more interesting and why such an abrupt ending to the saga was anti climatic to me.

As mentioned above, it is heavily implied by the whole context and the whole Mordremoth story arc, that all the vines you see around the world are its “body”.

Now, instead of thinking of it as a single, large tree rooting its way into the world, one might imagine Mordy as a “clonal colony”, basically meaning that he just genetically spreads himself identically everywhere, starting from a central point (wherever he first awoke). Vines and “mouths”, and everything else really, that he grows around can wither and die (we do that many times over with the Vinewrath), and they can even be thought of as “individuals” in the sense of a single think working out some metabolism, and it would not come into conflict that killing out any single part of the clonal colony will not end the spreading of it elsewhere.

We even have a real life example of a clonal colony linked together by an intricate network of roots, ever spreading as the individual treetrunks flourish and perish accross the years, this colony is called Pando: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_%28tree%29, and it is a worthwhile debate if it should be considered “a single tree”.

The only difference from this to Mordy, is that Mordy does have a central unit (inside the Dream of Dreams) from which he can seemingly spread himself as a clonal colony. This way of putting it not only erases the question of his size (the size is simply the size of the root network’s reach), but also solves the matter of his shape (alas, he does not grow uniformly like a regular living being would, instead appearing to be many, i.e all the Vines and Octovines and basically everything he spawns directly from his root network.

As for the Rata Novus data, it could be that his mouth has so much more concentration of ley energy than the rest of the colony, that this is the only actually measurable signal.

Matt H.6142:

What is canon for Modremoths appearance? HOT media shows 3 different looks and the wiki seems to confuse the mouth of mordremoth with the dragon itself.

The wiki isn’t confused. The Mouth of Mordremoth is Mordremoth’s physical body. The game goes back and forth between calling it a creature of Mordremoth and Mordremoth itself, though.

You can even note how the face of the Mouth of Mordremoth and the mental avatar of Mordremoth’s head are nearly the same in appearance.

Mordremoth can transfer his mind into his corruption and regrow his physical body out of his corruption should it ever be killed. This is why we have to go into his mind and lobotomize him.

The Heart of Thorns tree in Dragon’s Stand is just part of Mordremoth’s corruption, and the heart of his domain; the talk about the vines being part of Mordremoth’s body is kind of metaphorical due to the whole ‘he grows his corruption out of his body and regrows his body from his corruption’ situation.

Basically, NPCs switch between referring to Mordremoth’s body (the Mouth of Mordremoth) and his corruption (the massive vines) when talking about Mordremoth’s physical state because, to them, they might as well be the same thing. Without removing both you cannot physically remove Mordremoth – as his mind exists in both and so long as either (and his mind) exists the other can be regrown.

• Biologically speaking, the Mouth of Mordremoth is his body.
• Magically and practically speaking, both the Mouth of Mordremoth and the corruption (vines and whatnot but not the minions and Blighting Trees) are Mordremoth.

Matt H.6142:

But on the Ley energy map, we see Mordremoth is in his corner making a signature no bigger than Tarir or Rata Novus. Considering how out of date that map is, could he have become bigger since then?

That’s a magically lit map, so it’s always up to date (in theory), but it doesn’t show Mordremoth rather than ley line nexuses – and Mordremoth just made his lair on one and remained there. When they say “that is Mordremoth” they’re actually saying “that is the ley line nexus where Mordremoth rooted himself to the ground and has kept himself since waking” – kind of easier to just simplify it, right?