Guild Wars 2

PART ONE

This is a new collection of Theories on the Elder Dragons, some that I do not think has yet been posted anywhere else on the Forums. There are several major points that I will be covering in it. Some of these points were asked by several other threads, but rather than posting on each of them individually, I am just going to create this topic. This topic covers many, many points, so I will be linking to several wiki and forum articles that covers these points in more detail.

The Main things that people are asking are Why are the Elder Dragons so %$^$ Weak? And there are other people asking if Zhaitan is even dead after that battle?

On the first point, I want to say that the Elder Dragons are weak, like extremely weak. Like so weak that the Human Gods, if they were in a good mood (or still alive themselves), might be able to come back to Tyria and lay the unGodly Smackdown on them all, well….Except for the part where the human gods have their power because of the magical energies they have inside of them. (I say this because of an unrelated theory I have about the human gods, and how they got their power to start with, and how they aren’t even technically gods, etc.). The Elder Dragon’s could just simply use their ability to consume magic, and lay the unholy smackdown on the gods themselves, before any battle ever starts.

Aside from that point, the Movement of the World article states that “These mystic and terrifying creatures rival the gods themselves.” This refers to the Elder Dragons. Based on this, I think that the Elder Dragons are not more powerful than the Human Gods by leaps and bounds, though they have the potential to,….except for something the Gods did thousand of years ago.

You remember the Bloodstones, right? (Gw1 article)Well, according to Randall Greystone in the Ruined City of Arah, During the last Rise of the Elder Dragons, the Seers gathered ALL the magic in the world that was not tainted by the Elder Dragons and put it all into this Bloodstone, even going so far as to take the Jotun’s magic from them (or they gave it freely, not sure). This prevented the Elder Dragons from consuming any more Magic. Now Remember that another Race from that Time period, the Forgotten, used a spell to break Glint free from Kralkatorrik’s influence.

As the war against the Elder Dragons and the Races of that Age waged on, I think that the Forgotten continued to use their spells to cleanse the magic tainted by the Dragons, and the Seers continued to pump this magic into the bloodstone, out of the reach of the Elder Dragons. I think that because of this, the Dragons eventually expended their magical energies, and were forced to go back to sleep.

PART TWO

Alright, the Dragons were brought to their weakest point in thousands of years, and were forced to go back to sleep. Everyone’s happy, right? Dragons can’t rise up again without magic? Welll…..The Human Gods kind of Messed that up for everyone, didn’t they?

Darn right they did! When the human Gods came to Tyria, they brought humans with them. (or were the gods humans themselves just the leaders of the human race? Whatever…another theory for another time!) anyways, Humans gradually became the dominant race on Tyria, and the poor Forgotten retreated to the Crystal Desert (which was an ocean back then). At the same time, the Gods were gathering up all the Magical artifacts in Tyria, either willing from other races, or by using force, and were bringing them to Arah, including the bloodstone.

One particular human, Jadoth, was being hunted and persecuted by the Forgotten. eventually the Forgotten had quite a large force of warships going after him, so, like any devout human, he prayed to Abaddon, and Abaddon answered, completely destroying the Forgotten armada. Abaddon used the original Bloodstone to gift magic to all the races of Tyria. (I am assuming that at this point, the Forgotten still had access to their magic, and Abaddon was gifting Magic to the other races to put them on an even playing field.)

Well….The Bloodstone was kind of useless since Abaddon released the magic into the world, and all the races that suddenly had magic (some sources say it was only humans who got magic), decided “to hell with those Forgotten. Lets kill eachother!”, so, yeah, they kind of did!

While the Original game says nothing of the Elder Dragons, I think that the sudden release of the magic was causing the Elder Dragons to stir once again, not to mention that everyone was busy killing each other to care about their rise. While the original game makes no mention of this (the dragons specifically, the killing each other thing, yeah, it did), I think that King Doric saw this comming (the dragons) or knew that something bad was comming, so he went to Arah, and pleaded with the Gods to take away the gift of magic because of the dragons (alsobecause of all the wars and bloodshed and such.)

The Gods did so, and they split the original Bloodstone into Five, one for each school of magic (Aggression, Destruction, Preservation, and Denial), as well as a Keystone. This keystone was needed to reassemble the bloodstones into one. This prety much took most of the magic from the world.

I also think that when the gods took the magic from the world, they also accidentally took part of the Dragon’s awakening power with it. I also think that Abaddon was corrupted by the Elder Dragon’s magic, which is what made him release the Magic from the original Bloodstone. when the other gods sealed the magic into seperate bloodstones, this prevented the magic from being released into the world, and prevented Abaddon from re-releasing it because of the four seperate stones, and the key. I think this is what made Abaddon go to war with the other Gods, and it explains why Abaddon was sealed in the Realm of Torment.

PART THREE

So…What about the Elder Dragons, Which I am sure were about to rise again because of the flood of magic that was in the world? Well, that leads me all the way back to the begining, where I said that the reason the Human gods don’t just come to Tyria to kill the Elder Dragons, is because they can’t. The Human Gods hold almost limitless magic power, and that the Elder Dragon’s would easily take that power from the Gods, and if that happened, really bad things might happen.

Things like,…for example, giving the dragons the power to leave Tyria, and enter the Mists, which is nothing but pure magic. If the Elder Dragon’s were able to accomplish that, then there would be no stopping them from consuming all of Reality, ending everything in Tyria, as well as all the Alternate Tyrias that exist in the Mists (WvW), and everything else in the Universe. That, would, Be, Bad!

So, I think that the Gods left, because they were one of the few beings with the Knowledge to create Portals into the Mists, and along with the huge amount of magic they possess, them leaving Tyria prevented the Dragons from waking up Early.

(now sure, there are other people in Tyria that can create mist portals, but, none of them have the power to create a mist portal large enough for an Elder Dragon to fit through. Not only that, but all portals to the mists are Asura gates, who have been shown through their science to be able to create gates that can go to other universes(well, timelines). So, even though the Elder Dragon’s have corrupted the Asura, and they certainly do have the knowledge to create Asura gate to go to a great many places, they still can’t get to the Mists. no amount of power on tyria would let them build a gate that big for them to fit through.

Now, it would have been more than possible for say, the Mouth of Zhaitan to go through one of these smaller Gates and consume the magic there, but because he was in a different dimenion, the magic he consumed would not go to his master, it would have either stayed inside of him, or it would just simply get lost back into the Mists.

This is getting Long, so lets review my Theories so far (also for those who TL;DR):::::

1) The Dragons are not, and never were more powerful than the Gods, but, they have the potential to.

2) The Original Bloodstone, created by the Seers, and filled with purified magic by the Forgotten, caused the Dragons to lose the war and go back to sleep. (I would also like to say now that because they are basically the fundamental forces of nature, the Forgotten couldn’t cleanse their tainted magic after they went back to sleep, only the magic that the Dragons expended and went back into Tyria)

3) Abaddon was corrupted by the Elder Dragons, and Unleashed the magic from the Original Bloodstone, and if it weren’t for King Doric and the other Five Gods, the Elder Dragon’s could have very well rose again, consuming all life on Tyria, and eventually spreading their corruption through the Mists.

4) The Human Gods left Tyria in order to prevent the Elder Dragons from rising again at that point in time, and They haven’t come back to Tyria, because if they do, the Elder Dragons would take their magical power and defeat them.

5) The Elder Dragons have no known way to gain access to the Mists in which to expand their power and influence.

PART FOUR

Alright, lets get to why the Dragons were so weak that a band of Humans, Char, Asura, Norn, Sylvari, and assorted minor races with a super powerful magical weapon were able to kill it.

First, we know that most of Tyria’s magic is sealed in the Bloodstones.

We don’t know if its 99%, or 51%, but we know it is ALOT. Going back to the Human Gods, when they went to War with Abaddon, they struck him down at the Mouth of Torment, and this blow was enough to turn all of the Crystal Sea, into the Crystal Desert. The Gods also had the almost unlimited power to shape Tyria however they saw fit. Going to the Dragons, When they Rose, each of them did Terrible things, but none quite as much as what the Gods could accomplish.

Tyria world map as of Gw1::: http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/a/ac/Tyria_world_fan_map.jpg

For example, going back to Guild wars 1, we can look at the world map, and see that Orr actually has quite a bit of it above ground, so when Zhaitan raised a continent, he didn’t actually raise that much, but, even basic physics will tell you that raising a bit of a continent will cause the water that was there to move elsewhere, and that’s what happened. It flooded Lion’s Arch, and the Crystal Desert. Imagine if Zhaitan had the Combined power of the gods (I imagine that he could immediately corrupt almost any living thing in a thousand miles of where he was at)…..

Now, we’re just going to mainly stick with Zhaitan with the rest of this posting, because he is the one we know the most about, but I’ll describe others too.

We Know that through missions in Guild Wars 2, we cut off the source of Zhaitan’s food, which was magical artifacts. We also cut off the ships that carried dead bodies to Zhaitan which prevented him from raising a larger army. This cut off his power a little bit, but it was not what made him so weak that we could kill him.

The fact that we were cutting away his source of magic at the source, and destroying the dead before they could reach his influence, meant that Zhaitan was getting scared, and was getting desperate, So he raised as many Dragon Champions as he could, but…Could he raise those dragon champions without using up all of his own power?

My Answer is, no, he couldn’t, which was the reason why Zhaitan was gathering magical artifacts so he could consume their magical energy. I think that when Zhaitan Corrupted something to his side, or when he raised a Dragon Champion, he had to use a portion of his own power in order to do it. Just like when Morgoth in the Silmarillion spread his power too thin is creating the Balrogs, werewolves, his own dragon champions, etc. This is from the wikipedia entry, and explains my reason that the Elder Dragon’s of Guild Wars are also not unlimited sources of magic either:::

“Melkor’s powers were originally immense – greater than those of any other single Ainu. He shared a part of the powers of every other Vala, but unlike them used it for domination of the whole of Arda. To accomplish this Morgoth dispersed his being throughout Arda, tainting its very fabric; and only Aman was free of it. His person thus became ever more diminished and restricted.”

So what I am saying, is that as the Dragon’s spread their influence, they get weaker, so weak infact that his own Sauron-like champions could probably challenge him and deal a crushing blow to him if they weren’t completely under his corruption and influence.

If the Dragon’s could gain access to magical energy, either through artifacts or inside of a living thing, then they could replenish their power, but we had Five races of Tyria, and all their combined might doing literally everything they could to stop that from happening.

Not only that, but the Glory of Tyria, the Airship you rode on during the final battle with the Dragon, was equipped with a MEGA-LIT Cannon, a mist-cooled tripartate thautmatium energy weapon with a lead tracer array set for draconic energy. I am not even going to bother trying to explain what that long word means (maybe you can help Anet?) That weapon was specifically built to Destroy Draconic Energy (or, since magic can’t be destroyed in this game, it only changed form, a form the dragon couldn’t immediately use)

That weapon would have been enough to drain the Dragon of ALOT of its magical energies, which it did, greatly injuring him. All that had to be done was get on some canons, and batter the dragon until it fell, and probaly died of the fall, by crushing itself under its own weight, if the players didn’t kill it already from the cannon fire.

PART FIVE

The reason’s I explained above are also possible to explain why Kralkatorrik was so weak when Destiney’s edge fought it. When it created the DragonBrand, it probably used most of its power doing so. It also landed in the Crystal desert, which is almost completely devoid of life, and no senitent race lived there, so there isn’t much in the way of magic for it to consume. So, I think that Kralkatorrik is the Weakest Elder Dragon right now, in terms of the ones still alive.

I think that Primordus is the Most powerful of the Elder Dragons since it has been awake the longest, and it has been consuming all manner of Asuran Artifacts, as well as those of the Dwarves, any Skritt Empires if they exist, and countless other civilizations that used to exist beneath Tyria.

I think that Jormag is probaly the middle power (but something we don’t know could put him much higher on the list), because he has a great many magical artifacts of the Norn and Kodan that he has probably consumed and corrupted already, not to mention any other Race that exists out there in the Far Shiverpeaks and beyond.

I can’t tell where the Deap Sea Dragon is in Power, because I am unsure of what is in the deep parts of the Ocean, other than Krait, Quaggan, Largos, and Karka, but he is probably quite powerful.

Lastly, there is the Jungle Dragon, which we know almost nothing about because it is still sleeping.

I can support some of this further if you read that short story about the Zephry Sanctum, when they describe that the Magic the Dragon’s consume isn’t destroyed. (I think it only changes forms), and it would just simply take the Forgotten’s cleansing spell (or what was used at the Artesian Waters in the Personal Storyline), to cleanse the Elder Dragon’s corruption.

Alright Lets Review the major points of this section (also for those who TL;DR)::

1) Most of Tyria’s magic is sealed in the Bloodstones, and the Elder Dragons do not have access to it.

2) Even comparing the feats of the Elder Dragon’s to the Gods, they don;t really compare to the Gods.

3) We cut off Zhaitan’s sources of power by killing the Mouth of Zhaitan, the Eye of Zhaitan, and do several other things.

4) Zhaitan is as much to blame for his downfall as we are. In his fear, he created as many dragon champions and other creatures as he could to try to destroy us, that drained his own power, and made him weak enough for the combined might of five races of Tyria to bring him down, once and for all.

5) Other Elder Dragon’s work in the same way. Kralkatorrik for example lost most of his power when he created the Dragonbrand, and hasn’t been able to regain his original power yet.

6) Magic is like Matter and Energy. It cannot be created or Destroyed. It only changed forms.

Alright, I think this long, long, post covers all the points that I though of and wanted to cover. I am 100% sure that someone will poke over 9,000 holes in it. Just post some sources backing up your claims so I can read them. And with that, lets see what people think, or will come up with…

Seems like a good theory, but from what we know from ANet, these Dragons had so much magic in them that magic was dripping from them. Kralk didn’t brand minions or anything, everything just became branded when he FLEW over them because his magic was/is so immense that it works like that. It is also said that Zhaitan is/was the weakest of the dragons. It is also said that these dragons aren’t really smart, they’re just weapons of mass destruction and their champions do all the work for them. The reason we haven’t faced any new dragon yet is because they all seem “busy” with something else. Like Kralk with Palawa and Primordus underground with god knows what, but in the end it doesn’t make sense because they are supposed to be so powerful that Palawa would seem like a regular lv10 Thrall compared to a Lv80 Full zerker Warrior with SoR and Frenzy +100 blades on.

I just want to face more of them and can’t wait for Kralk, wonder how we will fight him and how ANet will create him because he is supposed to be huuge.

Kralkatorrik, from all the information I can gather, including from ::: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kralkatorrik

Everything didn’t JUST become branded JUST because he was JUST that powerful. His Breath corrupted anything it touched, which meant that his breath has ALOT of magic in it, which means that the very act of using his Breath to turn the land black, creating his minions in the process, drained his magic as he flew over Ascalon. And if the dragons are so powerful they are ‘Dripping’ magic, that means that they are gradually losing their magical energies that way as well. That means that they are so powerful, their own bodies couldn’t contain the magical energies they had when they awoke (not even including all they consumed so far), so I have to wonder why they even bothered to go back to sleep in the last cycle? And, where’s the source that Zhaitan is/was the weakest, or is it just specultion because we killed him first? And, where is the source that says that the elder dragon’s aren’t really smart, that their champions do all the work and thinking for them?

Kralkatorrik for example, Knew that his Champion Glint betrayed him, from before the last time he went to sleep, so the first thing he did when he woke up, was go and and kill her traitorous butt. You think a Dumb Force of Nature would have enough intelligence to do that? These things obviously have intelligence.

And have you considered the reason we haven’t fought any other Elder Dragons is BECAUSE we killed Zhaitan? The other Elder Dragons are probably afraid of the Races of Tyria now because of what we did, and are now thinking of a different strategy to take us out so they can continue their quest to consume everything.