Guild Wars 2

Was the decision to make Mordremoth a intangible entity a last minute decision? In Scarlet’s death cinematic as well as the pale tree’s vision he’s a very real dragon, or was it his “mouth” all along? I thought that was kinda lame.

Also I’m having a very hard time picturing in my head how you’re supposed to “enter” his mind “through” Traeherne and that your mind was powerful enough to defeat a freaking Elder Dragon.

The Mouth of Modremoth is Mordremoth’s real body. Notice how its a real dragon instead of a plant-like being, akin to Mordrem. I think the idea is that all the vines and plants that sprout from it come out of the tail, and it’s permanently rooted to it’s lair, explaining why it hasn’t been roaming around Tyria on it’s own behalf.

Mordremoth is effectively immortal and can resurrect itself using a vessel it’s corrupted, as long as it has a mental connection via The Dream. However, its likely this ability has the limitation of requiring a body with specific properties, explaining why Mordremoth simply doesn’t resurrect himself using a random Mordrem Guard. Meaning he can only sustain himself within his own body, or Trehearne’s body, due to his status as the first Sylvari. Its likely that Diarmid, Hareth and Adryn could have been potential candidates for Mordremoth to resurrect himself with also, but since they were already dead at this point, he couldn’t have used them.

I think the only reason why the Pact Commander was capable of destroying Mordremoth’s mind was because he was heavily weakened by The Pact who were fighting his body from outside. If it wasn’t for that, Mordremoth definitely would have defeated the Commander. From there, his mind had been shattered, and forced to resurrect inside Trehearne’s body, and The Mouth of Mordremoth was already dead, so it was a simply task of killing Trehearne to ultimately kill the dragon and all of his potential vessels.

Its pretty ambiguous, and theres probably a couple of holes somewhere in my take on it. LS3 will undoubtedly be focusing on the fallout caused in this arc, and covering The Revenants and Elite Specialisations, so its likely that none of this will be explained in full, but if we’re lucky, it might turn up in an in-game readable book somewhere. Keep an eye out.

Daharahj.1325:

Was the decision to make Mordremoth a intangible entity a last minute decision? In Scarlet’s death cinematic as well as the pale tree’s vision he’s a very real dragon, or was it his “mouth” all along? I thought that was kinda lame.

Since it’s his mouth that eats leyline energy it makes a lot of sense that it is the mouth we see in that cinematic.

Also I’m having a very hard time picturing in my head how you’re supposed to “enter” his mind “through” Traeherne and that your mind was powerful enough to defeat a freaking Elder Dragon.

If you feel that way then you probably don’t like the novel Edge of Destiny.

Though the Mouth of Mordremoth’s mouth looks nothing like the crocodile-like mouth we see in the cinematic.

And unlike Kralkatorrik, Diovid, Mordremoth is the Elder Dragon of Plants and Mind. So it does seem a bit weird that he would be overpowered in his sphere of power.

If they never gave him that sphere, keeping the Elder Dragons to one (especially since Zhaitan’s makes little sense as well), it would probably work much better.

It is possible the second sphere merely hints to what the dragon’s greatest advantage is and how to bring it down. Going by that logic Modremoth being the dragon of mind means only that his greatest power is the ability to transfer his mind to new hosts and constantly grow so long as his mind is intact.

After all, he didn’t really use mental magic on anyone that wasn’t one of his own creations. The PC also made a big deal about Modremoth attacking through the Dream, which as far as I know non-Sylvari don’t have access to outside special circumstances.

Granted the death of Zhaitan had little to do with shadows or light. But then, we never really learned Zhaitan’s special weakness. We killed him by poisoning his food supply then vivisecting him with a laser.

Similarly one could in theory do the same to Modremoth. But his special regenerative ability makes killing him physically impractical, as you’d need to burn every last inch of his immense corruption to ash. Zhaitan was just unlucky in that he was really, really easy to physically destroy comparatively.

What was the point of the air fleet then when they didnt even know what to attack? Did they think that “oh we’ll figure it out on our way there”??

They lost the majority of pact members that way, yet they had enough manpower to take down the mouth and move through the majority of the jungle without an issue, despite the chak, hylek and wildlife tearing them to bits.

I don’t know, there are some major plot holes i really can’t get behind.

As for the point, Zhaitan was very hard to miss when he took to the fight. I suspect their idea was to flush Mordremoth out of hiding and deal with him when he was out in the open.

We didn’t know Zhaitan’s special weakness either, and we took him out with that fleet. And Zhaitan was awake for over one hundred years consuming the magic of Orr. On paper and as far as we knew Modremoth SHOULD have been substantially weaker than Zhaitan.

That’s why we made such a hard push against him. To cut him down before he could amass the kind of power the other dragons already have. He was already going on the offensive, and if he kept expanding at the rate he was he would have become a far greater threat to us personally.

And keep in mind this same tactic was very nearly successful against Kraalkatorrik with only Destiny’s Edge and Glint. This time we had Destiny’s Edge and potentially hundreds of airships, plus Trahearne and the weapon Caladbolg from the Pale Tree.

Ehecatl.9172:

After all, he didn’t really use mental magic on anyone that wasn’t one of his own creations. The PC also made a big deal about Modremoth attacking through the Dream, which as far as I know non-Sylvari don’t have access to outside special circumstances.

White Stag does.

And not all sylvari have access to the Dream. Namely, Malyck.

Ehecatl.9172:

Granted the death of Zhaitan had little to do with shadows or light. But then, we never really learned Zhaitan’s special weakness. We killed him by poisoning his food supply then vivisecting him with a laser.

Which to me makes the whole Rata Sum thing seem a bit silly. They need to explain Zhaitan’s relation to shadow as well as what its weakness was.

Because currently it feels tacked on as an afterthought, which feels tacky (pardon the pun).

Well yes, the White Stag. But that’s a special case.

And we don’t know what happened to Malyck and his Dreamless tree yet.

But we know that Modremoth’s mental powers only really effected the Dream and those connected to it. He didn’t mind control anyone else. So it doesn’t seem like he had any sort of extra special mind powers the other dragons didn’t aside from his ability to transfer his mind to a new host.

My point was more that “the Dream isn’t even Mordremoth using ‘mental magic’ but him just having a connection to something that two other highly magical beings – and all those tied to them – have a connection to, and it isn’t even unique unto those coming from Mordremoth nor do all those who come from Mordremoth have that connection”.

And honestly, he doesn’t mind control anyone. The sylvari who turned? They weren’t controlled, they were influenced. Do Buried Insights and find the mordrem guard you can talk to:

Depending on how you interpret the dialogue, it appears that the mordrem guard gained sanity for a bit.

During the final two story steps, a sylvari PC even falls to Mordremoth’s call – even if only for a bit. But they recover.

You don’t gain sanity or recover from dragon corruption, which means that the sylvari that became mordrem guard weren’t corrupted – and given all the other ways that “mordremoth’s call” is described as and how Scarlet/Aerin acted, it’s less of mind control or brainwashing (like corruption) and more like subliminal messages.

The physical change matches the very same thing we learned when Canach’s appearance changed so drastically – that sylvari who undergo immense psychological changes also undergo physical changes. We even see this with Caithe in Season 2, indirectly, as she gains Wynne’s hairstyle when she takes on her secret – a minor yet fundamental change in character appearance.

It would even make perfect sense for the Mordrem Guard, after Mordremoth’s death, to shake their head and go “what am I doing?” and no longer be serving Mordremoth’s now-gone will… presuming he is dead, that is. For all we know, Mordremoth planted more than just one seed.

In the end, the ONLY use of mind sphere we see him using is his ability to transfer his mind out of his body and into his corruption (effectively making all of his corruption his ‘body’ which is why he’s nigh immortal).

While the dragons are massively more powerful than the PC races in terms of magical and physical power (at least on an individual basis), mentally I don’t think they’re actually that much stronger. They are stronger, and I don’t think I’d back any member of a playable race against an Elder Dragon mentally if they were alone and on an even playing field (Snaff arranged an uneven one for his duel with Kralkatorrik) – but I think it is believable that a handful of strong-willed mortals could beat an Elder Dragon in a mental duel – and the PC, Caithe, and Canach all count. (Braham I’m not so sure about, but that’s at least two and a bit versus one).

We may also be underestimating the effect of the Dream here. While Mordremoth can both attack the Dream and attack through the Dream, on the whole the Dream actually seems to be hostile to Mordremoth. It’s issued Wyld Hunts to work against Mordremoth, including one to outright kill Mordremoth, and keep in mind that the most vulnerable sylvari of all to Mordremoth were those who cut themselves off from the Dream entirely, or at least tried to. With the Pale Tree weakened, Mordremoth was able to attack through the Dream, but that might have been because that was still the only way to defeat the Dream’s protection. When we attacked Mordremoth through the Dream, it’s plausible that the Dream itself augmented our strength.

Regarding Zhaitan: You need to do specific story steps to do it, but there are indications in the PS that the Pact and the orders before the Pact were researching the weaknesses of dragon minions… and the research mostly focused on Risen because they were usually the most available. At least some magitech weapons we see early on are either designed to be used against Risen (Professor Gorr’s Vacuumagic Polarizer, for instance) or turn out to be useful against Risen after being designed to deal with a different kind of undead (the Ghostbore weapons from the Iron Legion personal story). It’s likely that the weapons of the Glory of Tyria were made incorporating this knowledge, on the principle that it was shown to be effective against dragon minions – the error the Pact made was that they’d made their weapons to target Zhaitan’s weakness (possibly without even really recognising what it was) thinking that they were targeting a weakness that was universal to the Elder Dragons.

Dang, I must’ve not crossed paths with that Sylvari because I don’t remember that dialogue. It’s very interesting.

Should make the next living story really interesting. All the Modrem should be working on their own now. I have no doubt many will continue being Modrem and trying to seize power, but many more will just be confused and disoriented in a very hostile environment.

At any rate, we seem to have come to the same conclusion. Modremoth didn’t have any unique mental powers aside from his connection to the Dream. His second domain seems to hint at his ability to transfer his mind to a new host.

And I really hope he had more than one seed. I’d love to see a new, weaker Modremoth sprout up later as a sub-plot in a future arc. Shoot, a part of me even kind of hopes Zhaitan makes a reappearance in some shape or form.

I think he only shows up if you’re playing a sylvari character yourself. When he’s there, he’s near the start of the Rata Novus story step instance – if you turn around and backtrack a little you should find him. (I think it’s an achievement, too, so it’s worth doing just from that perspective.)

Technically speaking, Zhaitan did die when it came into contact with its shadow. To be fair, I am sure being shot out of the sky and the massive plummet to the ground played some minor part in Zhaitan’s death. However, we can factually state that Zhaitan fell, hit the ground and made contact with its shadow, and then died.