Guild Wars 2

WARNING: SPOILERS TO ECHOES OF THE PAST’S FINAL INSTANCE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

What is the Antikytheria?
Also called “the All”, it is a diagram showing Tyria in the center, with six spheres of magic – or “bodies” as described by the Apostate – around it. I have compiled all mentions of it in the first three attachments.

Ogden says that what the asura call the Eternal Alchemy is also the All, but also mentions that their attempt to define it pushes them away from understanding it, and that their perspective is limited.

The design on the ceiling that denotes the first letter of each dragon is a design of the Antikytheria.

According to the Apostate, when the balance is destroyed, the world can end. This may hint to the vision seen in Episode 2 with the orb – now labeled as Z for Zhaitan – crashing into the center – now known to be Tyria. The vision was a depiction of what the Apostate describes, so it seems.

Six Gods. Six Dragons
Long in the community have there been attempts to tie the Six Gods and Six Elder Dragons. Some tried relating them as opposites. Others, as the same beings. Always, the connections fail. Now we have reason for a connection. Two actually.

The first is the Antiketheria; according to the Apostate, its center is not Tyria, but “Thyria”. Why the change? Perhaps an error in ancient Krytan translation. Or perhaps where humanity came from – the Apostate, living in the Realm of Torment, not far from the Domain of Secrets, may learn such information.

The second is the revelation of the Elder Dragons having two spheres of influence, rather than one. Unfortunately, forgot to screenshot this, but it is from the beginning of the instance Hidden Arcana. Mordremoth is “mind” and “plant”; Zhaitan is “shadow” and “death”. The other four are unclear to us presently, on their second sphere of influence. Similar to the Elder Dragons having two spheres – the Six Gods have always been attributed with at least two spheres of influence of their own; Dwayna is life and air, Grenth is ice and death, etc. An issue comes into play with how one of these spheres seem to change amongst generations – Abaddon was the god of water and knowledge, Kormir has no tie to knowledge; Grenth is the god of ice and death, Dhuum had no (known) ties to ice.

But must they match perfectly? I say no.

There is now a third piece of evidence hinting to a similarity – see attachment four. It was believed that Glint would become an Elder Dragon.

But there can be only six, right? Unless they it’s a replacement.

Think about Grenth, Abaddon, and Kormir. They all replaced their predecessor. Though Dhuum lives, he is not a god. He is not of the Six.

After Zhaitan’s death, his magic returns to the world. And Tequatl grows stronger. Glint was ancient and powerful, ready to become an Elder Dragon.

Like the Six Gods, the Elder Dragons can be replaced.

My theory is that the Six Gods were akin to the Elder Dragons for the world humanity and the Six Gods came from. We know that Abaddon had a predecessor, and that Balthazar brought his father’s head in hand when coming to the world. And there has been suspect of a cataclysm that they were escaping. What if in their world, something tied to Abaddon’s ascension and/or the death of Balthazar’s father broke the balance of the Antikytheria and it wasn’t fixed in time to save the world, plunging it into decay and darkness and forcing the Six Gods to flee?

That is my theory.

The Elder Dragons are NOT the orbs
In the vision, yes, the orbs were showing the Elder Dragons. But take note of attachment two. They are spheres of magic, the norn thinks of them as spirit realms. The Elder Dragons are not realms, though they consume magic they are not magic.

The spheres are realms of magic – perhaps the four schools were amongst them, though that’s speculative – and the Elder Dragons balance magic. One dragon per sphere: one dragon to balance each sphere of magic… their sphere(s) of influence.

Going back to the vision – yes, there were six orbs, which were related to the Dragons… but there was also the design behind the orbs (before lighting up and moving about). The outlines – that make up the ceiling design – would be the spheres of magic. Comparing vision to design; the orbs that were the dragons, are the smaller circles with a letter within them.

Edit: As an addendum, I’m making my prediction for the future of the plot:

We’re going after the egg and will use the Baby Dragon from GW1 as well as the to-be-hatched dragon as replacements for two Elder Dragons. Since this is “the last egg” and there were several in GW1, we may even see more of Glint’s children in the future, already hatched between the course of the two games.

The idea of replacing the Elder Dragons is an interesting one. We’ve had indications before that killing Zhaitan might have unbalanced the world somewhat – I’d previously hypothesised using Bloodstones to regulate the magic instead, but replacement dragons that actually care about lesser creatures might be another way of doing it. Makes me wonder if that was actually the primary aim of the Seers and Forgotten, and the Bloodstone was just a stopgap measure.

It also makes the egg important as an actual egg rather than a soul receptacle without negating our defense of the baby dragon in EOTN – we need six friendly dragons to finish things off, so every one counts. If Canthan dragons can serve in the role, this would give us five that we know of…

Something I forgot:

Ogden tells us, knowingly or not, what happens when the Antikytheria becomes imbalanced – how the world dies. As he says, too much magic and the world falls into chaos, but not enough and the world decays. Depending on how the world can fall out of balance, neither can happen. My theory on the world humanity and the Six come from is that they led it to decay – the gods took too much magic, leaving it to rot. This would explain how killing a god results in magical explosion, but killing an Elder Dragon does not – Zhaitan did not have the amount of magic the gods did, having taken all of their world’s magic. Reason for my thinking this is a line from Angel McCoy stating that humanity did not have much experience with magic, hence why they thought the gods created it. This could extend to their home world.

The Six Gods seemed to have been governors for their world, continuously balancing things. The Elder Dragons however balance at extremes – wait until magic hits one side of the extreme, then brings it to the other and let it repeat. The Elder Dragons however do not seem to intend to balance the world. The second instance – perhaps only for sylvari – implies that Mordremoth seeks the world’s destruction. Zhaitan was heavily hinted to seek ruling the world. Kralkatorrik is heavily hinted as wanting to obtain everything. Jormag is fixated on power and having only powerful individuals beneath him. Primordus appears desiring to kill life, though that’s heavy speculation there.

The Elder Dragons balance extremes, but not by desire to balance, but because they consume too much too fast, resulting in starvation and hibernation. If they hindered their hunger of magic, they may actually succeed in their goals.

The Elder Dragons are a necessity for the world, but the individuals can be replaced, like the Six Gods. In fact, they must be replaced if ever killed… Like Zhaitan.

Very interesting conjectures, Konig. I look forward to seeing if further LS chapters bear your theories out.

One question though. Would it HAVE to be a Dragon that assumes the role of a fallen Elder Dragon? Why not a human, a sylvari or some other mortal? Or maybe even the Six Gods could step into the role (barring objections from the Charr or other races who might not want human deities assuming such prominence over the world’s affairs).

Hard to say. It may be that only a dragon can handle such large amounts of Tyria’s magic. Given that they consume magic, maybe they simply are the ‘natural balancers’ and that while other beings can replace them, it’s simply easier to go with dragons.

I doubt the Six Gods themselves can due to how they messed things up pretty badly while the dragons slept.

Edit: I just remembered. The Eye of the North facets encountered are said by Jeff Grubb to be a reflection of the power the gods harnessed. I had taken it to mean Zhaitan given the Seer path of Arah – the Six strengthened the Bloodstone with Zhaitan’s magic.

But what if their world originally had dragon’s as balancers, and the Six Gods replaced them. But not being dragons, they couldn’t balance properly, leading to the world’s destruction.

It’s also possible that the Six Gods can’t step into the same role for the same reason they couldn’t simply replace Abaddon by divvying up his power, and needed a mortal to step into his proverbial shoes – there’s only so much magic that a single entity can absorb. It might be possible to have more than six, but you can’t have less. (This would also explain why the dragons don’t seem interested in attacking each other.)

Either way, this does bring up an interesting wrinkle when it comes to the gods – we know that at least some of the gods have had predecessors, so this suggests that the ‘target’ for the heroes might be to essentially do with the dragons as may have been done with the predecessors of the gods: replace alien, uncaring beings with ones that have the interests of living beings in mind. The Forgotten, which have now been confirmed as non-native to Tyria, may even have been inspired by the example of the gods to seek to convert the dragons into a similar state. (It’s worth noting, nonetheless, that it’s possible that Dwayna and Melandru were still originals, but because of their nature did not need to be replaced in order to have empathy for lesser beings – giving the gods a ‘head start’ in being replaced with more empathic personalities.)

Thinking on magical schools…

Three of the magical schools do line up nicely to the gods – monks/guardians to Dwayna (although Balthazar also has a stake), Mesmers to Lyssa, and necromancers to Grenth. Elemental magic, however, is spread out among most of the gods and most of the dragons as well. The only god that doesn’t currently have a stake in elemental magic is Kormir, and among the dragons, Zhaitan and arguably Mordremoth.

Now, any comparison between magical spheres as shown by the dragons and gods would require there to be additional schools of magic that aren’t known to mortals. With this being the case, it’s probably not too much of a stretch that there is actually seven schools – six that come from external sources (the six orbiting spheres) and one that represents the magic of the world itself (elementalism). This would explain why the other schools are all mystical and otherworldly to a certain degree while elementalism remains firmly based in the physical.

This implies that either there are three schools not known to mortals (possibly because the associated dragon had already eaten all the magic of that type before the Bloodstone was formed) or that the mortal schools of magic might actually be combinations of the six (or seven) primordial schools. It’s been observed that the gods and the dragons cannot be lined up perfectly – perhaps this is because the magic of Tyria is genuinely fundamentally different to how that magic is arranged wherever the gods came from.

Alternatively, the division into four schools could be purely due to the Bloodstones. Six schools might be the ‘natural’ state, but because of the tampering of the gods, the lines have been shifted and the six schools have been squeezed into four. One possibility could be that the gods were attempting to reshape magic according to their own lines rather than those of the dragons – they managed to more-or-less succeed in aligning Denial and Aggression with Lyssa and Grenth respectively, but multiple forms of magic ended up being squeezed together for Destruction and Preservation, and who knows what additional forms of magic may be locked into the keystone?

This could, in fact, be a reflection of where the domains of the gods overlap with those of the dragons, and where they do not. Equating Zhaitan with Dhuum/Grenth is a fairly simple parallel to make – both are associated with darkness and death, and thus the school of necromancy came out intact from the attempt of the gods to impose their own magical structure upon Tyria. Similarly, while Lyssa is more focused on illusion while Kralkatorrik may be more inclined towards chaos magic, the fact that both draw from the ‘purple’ end of the magical spectrum may in fact be significant, and overall the overlap between the two meant that mesmerism came out intact. However, when it came to the others, the matchups just didn’t line up so well: so when the gods tried to rearrange Tyria’s magic according to their own model, they failed, and the preservation and destruction schools are formed from the resulting mashup.

If this hypothesis is correct, than my expectation is that Kralkatorrik’s two areas of focus will turn out to be compatible with Lyssa’s portfolio, in the same manner that Zhaitan’s are to Grenth. However, Mordremoth’s focus on mind makes it incompatible with Melandru, despite their common interest in plants – that’s an aspect that would be more associated with Lyssa or, if Lyssa is wholly compatible with Kralkatorrik, possibly Abaddon/Kormir. Likewise, Primordus’ second area of focus might be something incompatible with Balthazar.

This has been fairly stream-of-conscious, so it’s probably getting fairly incomprehensible to others – I might have to think on it some more and see if I can find a better way of putting it. The gist is, though, that Tyria naturally has six branches of magic represented by the dragons, the gods have a different six branches, and the four schools known to mortals are ultimately the result of the gods trying to make them the same.

my (simplified) opinion….

I think its referencing the fact that the universe is a complex machine, a computer (eternal alchemy) :::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

If this is the case, then I could see there being the following areas of focus for the gods:

Dwayna: Weather, Life
Balthazar: Fire, Strength
Melandru: Growth, Earth
Grenth: Death, Darkness
Lyssa: Illusion, Chaos
Kormir: Mind, Secrets?

This compares to the following possible sets for the dragons:
Primordus: Fire, Earth
Jormag: Weather, Strength
Zhaitan: Death, Darkness
S-Dragon: Secrets?, Life?
Kralkatorrik: Chaos, Illusions (note that Glint has powerful illusionary powers, even if we don’t see much of that from Kralky. Crystals are also able to make optical illusions just as water can…)
Mordremoth: Growth, Mind

Obviously, we don’t know enough about the DSD to make good guesses as to what it likes. By this system, though, I’d predict (scientific theory! Has predictions that may be verifiable by experiment!) that the DSD may turn out to have an affinity with sea life that has something of a Dwayna-esque slant to it, while its other area of interest will turn out to intersect with Kormir/Abaddon in some way. Meanwhile, Dwayna and Jormag have a shared interest in weather, although Dwayna prefers to use it to bring rain while Jormag prefers to freeze things, but Jormag also brings in a power/competitive aspect more commonly associated with Balthazar… which explains why Jormag is so attractive to the highly competitive Norn.

Either way, the end result is that two of them match up, which is why two branches of magic line up to gods and dragons both. The other four don’t match up, and Preservation and Destruction are the result of trying to force them to.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Edit: As an addendum, I’m making my prediction for the future of the plot:

We’re going after the egg and will use the Baby Dragon from GW1 as well as the to-be-hatched dragon as replacements for two Elder Dragons. Since this is “the last egg” and there were several in GW1, we may even see more of Glint’s children in the future, already hatched between the course of the two games.

I assume the idea that Glint could become an Elder Dragon was first and only brought up by Marjory and Kasmeer in the instance? I don’t think I’d heard anyone suggest a creature could replace an Elder Dragon or that Glint was anywhere near powerful or capable enough to do it. If it was possible, wouldn’t she have said something to Destiny’s Edge?

The other doubt I have about using Glint’s offspring to replace an Elder Dragon is simply that they are too young. Even the baby dragon from EotN is only 250 years old (for a dragon I don’t think that’s a lot) and that’s assuming it lived (the obsession with Glint’s egg makes me think the Baby Dragon didn’t make it). One of the reasons Marjory and Kasmeer talk about Glint becoming a potential Elder Dragon is her age and how long she has been absorbing magic. Glint is old and even after all the time she was building up magic, she didn’t reach ED levels. What makes us think a 250 year old dragon is physically capable of doing that? I know Glint didn’t have the advantage of Zhaitan’s death (and its magic seeping back into the world) but it’s still quite a big task. It does explain why Primordus sent its minions after the baby dragon in GW1 – maybe Primordus saw the dragon as a threat and wanted to exterminate it while it was young and defenseless. We see similar behavior from Aerin when he goes after Glint’s egg on the Zephyrite ship then he is later looking for it in Dry Top. Mordremoth is interested in Glint’s egg for some reason.

While we are looking at the idea of one powerful magical being replacing another from a group of six, it might be worth looking at how Kormir became capable of absorbing Abaddon’s powers. I think she received a gift from the five other gods and that’s what allowed her to contain Abaddon’s power without tearing apart. Unlike Grenth we were present when Kormir ascended to godhood.

Wouldn’t all this mean Tequatl is becoming the next Zhaitan? Tequatl is presumably the closest dragon-like creature to the location of Zhaitan’s body. If Zhaitan is leaking ED magic and another dragon is capable of absorbing it, I would expect Tequatl (or one of the bone dragons in Orr) to have begun doing that already.

Actually, the Glint as potential Elder Dragon came from Ogden, who stated it as a belief of the dwarvern Brotherhood of the Dragon.

@Shiren: You’re right that Glint is centuries old, but the strength of a dragon is probably more directly related to how much magic it has available than on how old it is. Tyria has been fairly magic-deprived for most of her life (since the Forgotten ritual, anyway) so she was probably making do on scraps until quite recently. Meanwhile, a newly hatched Glintling that is given pieces of Zhaitan or Mordremoth to munch on might be able to become very powerful very quickly…

…similar, in fact, to Kormir absorbing Abaddon’s power.

And yeah, given what we’ve been seeing, Tequatl’s power-up coming from absorbing some of Zhaitan’s power does seem quite likely.

I envision the gods being between the dragons, but I can’t quite get it to work, and I suspect that the reason is the one Konig suggested, namely that the domains are shifting. Here is my best attempt

Dwayna: life / wind
Kralkatorik: wind / chaos
Lyssa: chaos / shadow
Zhaitan: shadow / death
Grenth: death / ice
Jormag: ice / war
Balthazar: war / fire
Primordus: Fire / growth
Melandru: growth / plants
Mordremoth: plants / mind
Abaddon: mind / water
Splashy (bubbles): water / life

Which leads back to dwayna. Obviously some of these are pretty solid while others aren’t.

A weird thing I noticed according the wiki is that Lyssa is supposed to cover the realm of water.

There is a book in the library where the author says there are no known connections between dragons and the gods. Not sure if this is AN way of saying yo good theories and all but its not it or just saying there is no connection found in-game yet?

GscGunner.2419:

There is a book in the library where the author says there are no known connections between dragons and the gods. Not sure if this is AN way of saying yo good theories and all but its not it or just saying there is no connection found in-game yet?

It also gets more complicated when you consider the Bloodstone, and that there are only four schools of magic contained in them (what are there two schools that aren’t or something?). It seems like there are lots of things at play, but they don’t necessarily have to be joined at the hip in order to work.

Take Greek Mythology for example. There was a pantheon of Gods with Uranos in charge, a pantheon with Kronos in charge, and a pantheon with Zeus in charge. But, the Primordial forces/elements that made up the universe never changed.

It seems like in GW2, the Dragons are the Primordial forces/elements required for the world to work, and the human gods were just the Flavor of the month(/year/century/millennium) pantheon that so happened to be in charge at the time. Then there is the four schools of magic in the bloodstones to contend with as well that don’t currently equate themselves with any god or dragon.

If this is the case, then you cannot equate the Gods with Elder Dragons.

…..

You can, however, relate the Elder Dragons with the six orbs, and equate those six orbs with the *Anti*kyTheria.

Anti-Tyria…..It seems appropriate, considering that when the Dragons wake up, they absorb all the magic on Tyria, literally killing the planet before they go to sleep (or at least all life on the planet)

((Also, I still think that when “…The Author calls it the Antikytheria, describing it as a cosmic mechanism made of many parts…” Anet is directly referencing the real world Antikythera mechanism, and is telling us that the Eternal Alchemy/universe/etc. is quite literally a very complex machine made up of many different moving parts.))

Everything is related (obviously), but I don’t think its always a one to one comparison.

The biggest thing I gleamed from between the lines, is that the Thyria + 6 realms arrangement doesn’t encompass everything, that the multiverse is truly vast, if not boundless, as I have suspected for some time.

Aside from that, this compliments (and alters) my old theory about the Elder Dragons being inherent to Tyria, embodiment of it’s magic. Now it seems it’s their “mantles” that are the embodiment of Tyria’s magic. If souls = spirits = magic, then the souls of humans are foreign magic to the elder dragons. If the rest of Tyrian modern life (as opposed to dragons) also came from outside Thyria arrangement (I know, kittenumption, bear with me), that would mean that in the eyes of the dragons, their world was full of invaders and alien magic. This would explain the destructive impulses of Aerin, and possibly the destructiveness of Primordus.

My assumption not enough to convince you to consider modern life to be alien to Tyria? Think of Spirits of the Wild. Spiritual embodiments of different animals. Now, enter Kodan creation myth… (yeah, yeah, myths aren’t exactly the most credible sources…)

“Long ago, Koda, the Ancient One, Founder of the Earth, Keeper of the Sky, formed the world. In the beginning, the spirits of the world were wild and untamed. In time, many took physical form: spirits of stone, spirits of water, spirits of wind, spirits of soil, spirits of plants and birds and creeping things. All things with form have spirits… as do many formless things.

But one day the bear stood up and looked around him and saw that the spirits of the world were restless and chaotic. He could not understand the endless cycles of creation and destruction. And so bear was the first creature to speak, and with his first words he asked Koda, “Why is this so?” And Koda was pleased and made this offer to the bear: “If you would watch and learn, then watch and learn, and you shall protect and guide the spirits of this world.” And those who praised Koda and accepted this offer became the kodan. And those who were not ready and did not wish to change remained as bears."

My take on the bolded part? Life spontaneously forms from magic – similar to how demons form from the mist. For a very long time, the native magic of Thyria, dragon magic, shall we call it, was sealed away. However, wildlife was born into the world during that period, too – I would assume that directly after the last dragonrise, the world was rather desolate and devoid of life. So, that life formed from magic that entered the world while the dragon magic was mostly sealed away. I presume when a dragon consumes magic, it converts it to it’s own kind – or corrupts it. We have known precedence of magic being extracted, changed and re-injected to dragon minions – what if this is exactly how the corruption happens?

And if Kodan are bears changed by Koda, I could see Norn being humans changed by the Spirits of the Wilds. Curious how that would place Norn rather low in spiritual hierarchy…

GscGunner.2419:

There is a book in the library where the author says there are no known connections between dragons and the gods. Not sure if this is AN way of saying yo good theories and all but its not it or just saying there is no connection found in-game yet?

The book is probably a reference to discussions on the forums, actually. It states that… give me a moment to pull up the screenshot folder…

“A scholarly argument for the symmetry between Elder Dragons and the human gods. Unfortunately, by the end, it is clear that no proof exists to support this theory.”

Basically, past theories started with some of the more obvious parallels (Primordus to Balthazar being the first choice), but ends up making increasingly tenuous connections in order to try to give each god a single dragon counterpart and vice versa. That’s just not possible, as Konig and I have both pointed out a few times.

The theory here is that the gods and dragons are similar beings in that both absorb magic and serve to regulate it, but are not direct counterparts of one another. Well, except perhaps Grenth and Zhaitan on the one hand and Lyssa and Kralkatorrik on the other.

Incidentally, with regards to my last post… in that, I was attempting to present the gods and dragons as covering the same domains between each group, when on consideration even that might not be accurate. Consider, for instance, Dwayna’s focus on life/healing, something that is not apparent among the dragons. Assigning it to S-DSD is a handwave, based on our ignorance of S-DSD meaning we can’t rule it out, but what if ‘life magic’ was an element that existed where the gods come from, but is foreign to Tyria?

This could explain why there used to be powerful healing magic and convenient resurrection, but not any more – that power was coming from Dwayna while she remained active in Tyria, although she apparently could not stop hostile magic-users such as charr shamans from using it. After the departure of the gods, however, such magic simply no longer existed in Tyria.

It is also interesting to have the words of the Zephirite Masters, which discribed Glints magic, in mind.

They desciribed the true Crystals as something that still has her magic and that they grow the ones they sell.

However there was also said that Chrystals seem to be very potent magic batteries and that Glint gathered a lot of magic over the years she was alive.

It does sound a bit similiar to an Eldar Dragon, even though it is a much slower process.

On the topic of Eldar Dragons
If we put in the idea that Champions like Tequattle are able to become the new Eldar Dragons in the future, then we have to dismiss the thought of them being a physical being but existing as energy or on a different plane.

This could be interesting for the future, as it is possible to meassure Eldar Dragon magic (as shown by the Inquest).
If we consider every part of their magic to be part of their body / being which can possible spawn a new main form in the future, then a later storyline would be around the problem on containing this magic somehow.

Otherwise we would have to dicover the true purpose of them and either let them do their work, destroy them, or take over their purpose, only more substainable for the races of Tyria

Even then, it was like pulling hairs to get a connection. The dragon’s are, for all we can find, native to Tyria and the Gods are not as far as we’re aware. The book was likely a light jab at the discussions communities had following Eye of The North as people began to speculate and attempt at drawing connections. Honestly, I always catered to the coincidence-party in that… well something has to control the elements but that’s where Prim and Balth’s similarities kind of stop :P

Jaken.6801:

However there was also said that Chrystals seem to be very potent magic batteries and that Glint gathered a lot of magic over the years she was alive.

Yeah, it would make sense. Although circumstances aside, that’s exactly what the soul batteries were for that the Mursaat used to keep the Door of Komalie closed. But growing? That would be interesting. It wouldn’t be the first time for GW lore that an abundance of substance would ascertain a conscience.

Ronin.7381:

The dragon’s are, for all we can find, native to Tyria and the Gods are not as far as we’re aware.

That’s actually kinda the point. The dragons are from Tyria, the gods are from… somewhere else. It’s possible that the gods played a similar function to the dragons in that somewhere else that they came from.

However, this means that the symmetries that people have postulated do not need to exist. The ‘spirit realms’ (a kind of magical equivalent to the concept of Elemental Planes?) of Tyria are not necessarily the same as those of where the gods came from. As a set of six they might span the same concepts, or they might not even have that amount of symmetry beyond a few common elements.

So when the dragons return to the dream the gods wake up or return and vice versa? It’s a very yin and yang thing to me.

I really think the Abaddon Statue and Antikytheria on the ceiling are foreshadowing of bad things to happen at the Priory. Nothing good will come of having that statue there.

Iason Evan.3806:

So when the dragons return to the dream the gods wake up or return and vice versa? It’s a very yin and yang thing to me.

I really think the Abaddon Statue and Antikytheria on the ceiling are foreshadowing of bad things to happen at the Priory. Nothing good will come of having that statue there.

Collecting parts of ED should be at least dangerous too. Especially in one place. Maybe Priory will be destroyed in future. They gather knownledge and dangerous things.

Btw this norn master chef that wanna make his own bloodstone-food cart < I think he is under Mordemoth influence. Mordemoth wanna eat bloodstone and asking how to prepare it.

Mem no Fushia.7604:

Iason Evan.3806:

So when the dragons return to the dream the gods wake up or return and vice versa? It’s a very yin and yang thing to me.

I really think the Abaddon Statue and Antikytheria on the ceiling are foreshadowing of bad things to happen at the Priory. Nothing good will come of having that statue there.

Collecting parts of ED should be at least dangerous too. Especially in one place. Maybe Priory will be destroyed in future. They gather knownledge and dangerous things.

Btw this norn master chef that wanna make his own bloodstone-food cart < I think he is under Mordemoth influence. Mordemoth wanna eat bloodstone and asking how to prepare it.

And on that note, you can talk to someone in the library that tells you about the magical protections keeping the place safe. They also say that as the magic of the world is drained, those magical protections get weaker. An elder dragon will make a move when that happens.

Also, Bloodstone dust….I think Anet is telling us why there is no 500 chef….yet

draxynnic.3719:

@Shiren: You’re right that Glint is centuries old, but the strength of a dragon is probably more directly related to how much magic it has available than on how old it is. Tyria has been fairly magic-deprived for most of her life (since the Forgotten ritual, anyway) so she was probably making do on scraps until quite recently. Meanwhile, a newly hatched Glintling that is given pieces of Zhaitan or Mordremoth to munch on might be able to become very powerful very quickly…

…similar, in fact, to Kormir absorbing Abaddon’s power.

And yeah, given what we’ve been seeing, Tequatl’s power-up coming from absorbing some of Zhaitan’s power does seem quite likely.

But Kormir required a gift from the five gods before she could absorb Abaddon’s power.

<Party leader>: “Abaddon is breaking up!”
Kormir: “Incredible! All that knowledge!”
<Party leader>: “It’s running wild! It will destroy everything!”
Kormir: “I’m going into it!”
<Party leader>: “You can’t do that!”
Kormir: “Yes I can! I can contain the power. This is the gift the avatars gave me!”

The obvious difference between Kormir and Glint’s offspring is that without Kormir’s gift from the gods she was a mere mortal. Any of Glint’s offspring would be more powerful (and magical?) than Kormir without a gift simply because they are dragons.

Looking at the dialogue from Kormir’s ascension really makes the current plot seem like a recycled one from the fall of Abaddon. The idea that Abaddon’s magic being released by his defeat could be destructive is similar to the Antikytheria being out of balance when one of the Elder Dragons dies.

Considering that Kormir was capable of containing Abaddon’s power and ascended to god status as a human, I think we are thinking to narrowly by only considering dragons as potential candidates to replace an Elder Dragon. Assuming the replacement could ideally be related to the spheres of an Elder Dragon they replace, the Pale Tree might make an ideal candidate to replace Mordremoth. I don’t think Elder Dragons are technically the same species as dragons like Glint or Kunnavang. I suspect Kunnavang is more closely related to my pet river drake than she is to Jormag or Zhaitan. In that sense you might also have the Great Dwarf replace Primordus and Glint’s offspring replace Kralkatorrik.

@Iason Evan: There’s no evidence of any direct link between the dragons and gods. The theory here is that gods are counterparts of dragons from another place – the only connection between the leaving of the gods and the dragons waking, if any at all, is that the gods decided it was too dangerous to be around when the dragons were active.

@Shiren: Kormir required a gift, yes, but she started off as human.

What we’ve been told of Glint indicates that, whether a natural result of her original species or through her corruption by Kralkatorrik, she absorbs magic in the same way as an Elder Dragon, and Ogden even speculates that if Glint had survived long enough, she would have eventually become as powerful as an Elder Dragon herself.

Long story short, Glint, and likely, by extension, her children, absorb magic the same way elder dragons do. The only differences are magnitude, and that Glint cared about other races as something worth preserving, rather than threats to be destroyed or potential minions to be corrupted. Either way, as much as the Elder Dragons can be considered a species at all, I think Glint and her children are in the same bracket, albeit considerably younger and less powerful. Other dragon-shaped champions like Tequatl, the Shatterer and the Claw are probably likewise, albeit bound to the will of their ‘parent’ unless that will is broken somehow.

The Canthan dragons… we really don’t know. Given that they have very different bodyshapes, they could be the same thing, or they could be closer to being advanced drakes in nature.

If dragons by their very nature consume magic and store it, and Elder Dragons are really just the most ancient dragons that lived for very long and basicly became the (governors of the) magic they consumed, it stands to reason that time=power. Glint may have been old enough to gather enough magic in time, especially if she survived the Elder Dragons in this era.

If dragons by nature could consume massive amounts of magic immedietly (like Kormir absorbed Abaddon’s power and how we now think that the baby dragon would be able to take charge of Zhaitan’s/Mordremoth’s power), I think they just would. By that proxy the first to awaken would have gained all.

Unless they are more conscious of their role as balancers of magic than we give them credit for, and take care of not stepping on each others toes.

As for Konig’s theory on the human gods being similar beings to the original human world as the EDs are for Thyria, i agree, i had this thought for some time. But the fact that an escape from that origin world was necessary suggests that the gods, as connected to their subjects as they were, failed in their job to balance magic.

Thyria seems to be fairly healthy in the balance aspect, the awakening of the EDs, consumption of all magic, their return to slumber and the consequential return of magic is nothing more than a massive meta-magical winter-spring-summer-autumn on the scale of thousands of years.

But the human gods for some reason tried to take care of the lesser forms of life more than their duties. And it lead to disaster. Arriving on Tyria they figured out how the Bloodstones were used and how it effected the balance of things. Gifting magic to the races of Tyria might have been an effort to try to fix what they knew from experience to be a bad idea in the long run. Then come the first Guild Wars and Dorics plea to the gods to take it back.

Abaddon might have been the most disconnected from the plights of humanity or the other races, or he remained adamant in his opinion/knowledge that messing with the natural balance was a bad idea AND that the races must learn to control magic the hard way before the dragons wake. Then comes his banishment, and the Exodus of the Gods, realizing that they just suck at what they are doing… Or… to keep Tyria relatively balanced. As alien as the human gods are to Thyria, Abaddon missing from the new equation of 6 might have been invoking yet another disaster, so the other gods retreated to the Mists as well, only communicating their influence through avatars.

Then as Abaddon was about to break out, he would have become the only one part of the 6 on the world, and apart from going insane from millenia of banishment into torment, that would have been one of the worst disasters on balance, to top off the soon coming winter of the dragonrise. Kormir elevated to godhood taking Abaddon’s place, and the newly reformed Six could finally move on forever. Hoping to leave all the mess they made behind.

lakdav.3694:

If dragons by their very nature consume magic and store it, and Elder Dragons are really just the most ancient dragons that lived for very long and basicly became the (governors of the) magic they consumed, it stands to reason that time=power. Glint may have been old enough to gather enough magic in time, especially if she survived the Elder Dragons in this era.

If dragons by nature could consume massive amounts of magic immedietly (like Kormir absorbed Abaddon’s power and how we now think that the baby dragon would be able to take charge of Zhaitan’s/Mordremoth’s power), I think they just would. By that proxy the first to awaken would have gained all.

Unless they are more conscious of their role as balancers of magic than we give them credit for, and take care of not stepping on each others toes.

There are two other explanations for this, and both may be true simultaneously:

One is that there is a limit to how much magic a single entity can consume. This would explain why there are six Elder Dragons, and six gods – six is the minimum number of magic-consuming entities required to hold all of the magic of a world. The dragons aren’t interested in eating one another because they know they can’t hold all of the magic of another elder dragon, and with the risk that they’d lose the fight, there’s too much risk for too little gain.

The second is that the rate at which a dragon can absorb magic by normal means – drinking in ley lines, consuming or corrupting less powerful life forms, and so on – is still limited by how much magic is contained within and/or flows through the territory the dragon claims. A dragon could be able to consume all the magic it has access too instantaneously, but still have to wait for minions to collect artifacts, vins to grow, or for whatever means the dragon is using to gather it to work before it can do so. While if there was another dead dragon right in front of it, it might be able to chow down right away. Consider the distinction between having a roast chicken placed in front of you, versus a live chicken that you need to kill, pluck, and cook yourself. The actual eating time might be the same either way, but one of those cases is going to result in your hunger being satisfied a lot earlier…

Shiren.9532:

Considering that Kormir was capable of containing Abaddon’s power and ascended to god status as a human, I think we are thinking to narrowly by only considering dragons as potential candidates to replace an Elder Dragon. Assuming the replacement could ideally be related to the spheres of an Elder Dragon they replace, the Pale Tree might make an ideal candidate to replace Mordremoth. I don’t think Elder Dragons are technically the same species as dragons like Glint or Kunnavang. I suspect Kunnavang is more closely related to my pet river drake than she is to Jormag or Zhaitan. In that sense you might also have the Great Dwarf replace Primordus and Glint’s offspring replace Kralkatorrik.

I was thinking of the Pale Tree as a possible replacement as well, if such thing is possible anyway, but that seemed kinda the obvious choice though.

I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they bring back Malyck as a possible replacement contender as well. I thought the new book by Amaranda the Lonesome kinda foreshadowed something important regarding him. It was along the lines of, “Since he isn’t governed by the Dream or Nightmare, Malyck is allowed to have control of his own fate”. When I read that I kinda thought it paralleled the Gods’ and Kormir’s whole “This is your decision. You must make the choice that only a mortal could make.”

I guess the true question in the end of the day is, “What can be an Elder Dragon?” Or another important question, to me anyway, is, "How does their “corruption” fit into the grand scheme of things?"

Actually, now that you mention it…

That book might actually mean something frightening for Malyck’s fate. We have evidence, albeit not entirely proven, that Mordremoth can corrupt sylvari that are independent of Dream and Nightmare. And Malyck was last seen heading deeper into the Maguuma… where Mordremoth is.

We may be being set up for Malyck to have become a champion of Mordremoth here.

draxynnic.3719:

lakdav.3694:

If dragons by their very nature consume magic and store it, and Elder Dragons are really just the most ancient dragons that lived for very long and basicly became the (governors of the) magic they consumed, it stands to reason that time=power. Glint may have been old enough to gather enough magic in time, especially if she survived the Elder Dragons in this era.

If dragons by nature could consume massive amounts of magic immedietly (like Kormir absorbed Abaddon’s power and how we now think that the baby dragon would be able to take charge of Zhaitan’s/Mordremoth’s power), I think they just would. By that proxy the first to awaken would have gained all.

Unless they are more conscious of their role as balancers of magic than we give them credit for, and take care of not stepping on each others toes.

There are two other explanations for this, and both may be true simultaneously:

One is that there is a limit to how much magic a single entity can consume. This would explain why there are six Elder Dragons, and six gods – six is the minimum number of magic-consuming entities required to hold all of the magic of a world. The dragons aren’t interested in eating one another because they know they can’t hold all of the magic of another elder dragon, and with the risk that they’d lose the fight, there’s too much risk for too little gain.

But at the beginning of their rising, the first to awake would clearly have the advantage and the reason and the opportunity. If you put two sleeping starved wild animals at the two corners of a cage, the first to wake up would take the opportunity to attack and eat the other still sleeping. At that time it is not a matter of how much they can eat, because all of them are starving.

To carry on with that metaphor, the difference is that Tyria’s “cage” has a lot of stale food around each wild animals (ambient magic for Dragons). They choose not to attack the still living fresh animal, but to take their time and eat up all the stale food around themselves first. Could be laziness, sure. Or an instinctual taboo on cannibalism or a matter of being carnivore/herbivore/omnivore. Or the sentient recognition that the cage is balancing on the top of a pole, and one animal moving over to the others corner would result in a fall.

But ambient magic is ambient, it is untouched and not claimed by anyone else yet, so why dont the dragons continue to expand as rapidly as they start out? If there is no sentience of the balance that they upkeep, why do they seem to have waited for each other to wake and build up their powerbases through centuries when each individual dragon could set up their territory in a manner of days/weeks and could have consumed the world while most of the others were still sleeping? No “early bird catches the worm” in their system for some reason.

Eventually they all fill up, and could be true that at least 6 such creatures are necessary to consume the magic of an entire world, but the world is still far from being devoid of magic. There is still place in their tummies. There has to be if they aim to eventually devour it all.

That is possible. I wonder if Mordy’s corruption might effect him differently than it did Scarlet and Aerin, since he’s the first confirmed non-Dreamer that could be corrupted.

Worst comes to worst though, we can always beat him within a inch of his life and ship him off to Arah. Warden Illyra could strap him to the Alter of Glaust and work the Forgotten ritual, and we’d have another freed dragon champion.

Extra points if Illyra somehow knows Malyck from his stay with the Wardens.

The Tyria in the center of the diagram is the world or the continent? Cos what I don’t understand is that if we are talking about the world why are all 6 dragons so close to each other? We can now see the map of the world and is quite big, so why are they all around the continent of Tyria? If we talking about the continent only what does that mean? That the rest of the world does not have magic or that there are other 6 dragons circling around other continents? Or is there some other thing that I’m missing?

Underdark.3726:

The Tyria in the center of the diagram is the world or the continent? Cos what I don’t understand is that if we are talking about the world why are all 6 dragons so close to each other? We can now see the map of the world and is quite big, so why are they all around the continent of Tyria? If we talking about the continent only what does that mean? That the rest of the world does not have magic or that there are other 6 dragons circling around other continents? Or is there some other thing that I’m missing?

We’re talking about Tyria the planet. There may be some reason that the dragons are concentrated around Tyria the continent, perhaps because the presence of so many intelligent, magic based races caused them to come here during the last rise – better food to eat on. Or perhaps they had already destroyed the rest of the world and this was the last place they stopped over? (Or it just doesn’t make that much sense because it’s a video game and Arenanet doesn’t always seem to think things through super well)

Right now im using the word “Thyria” to point at the world and “Tyria” for the continent.
We dont know why everything is concentrated here on the continent lorewise. Its speculated that its just the most active area on the planet on a magical point. Might be the appearance of the human gods on Orr that drew the attention specificly to Tyria, or it could also be something about the area that made the human gods first emerge on Orr. Im not sure if the Artesian Wells were important originally.

I think there is somewhere that it’s said that the gods were drawn to Orr specifically, but I can’t remember exactly where.

lakdav.3694:

But at the beginning of their rising, the first to awake would clearly have the advantage and the reason and the opportunity. If you put two sleeping starved wild animals at the two corners of a cage, the first to wake up would take the opportunity to attack and eat the other still sleeping. At that time it is not a matter of how much they can eat, because all of them are starving.

To carry on with that metaphor, the difference is that Tyria’s “cage” has a lot of stale food around each wild animals (ambient magic for Dragons). They choose not to attack the still living fresh animal, but to take their time and eat up all the stale food around themselves first. Could be laziness, sure. Or an instinctual taboo on cannibalism or a matter of being carnivore/herbivore/omnivore. Or the sentient recognition that the cage is balancing on the top of a pole, and one animal moving over to the others corner would result in a fall.

Except that they’re not in a cage – they’re in a forest, miles apart and with lots of prey between them and their counterparts. Furthermore, their counterparts that are hibernating are doing so mostly in protected burrows, and may be prone to waking prematurely as they approach (dragons appear to be woken by feeding them enough magic – the magical energy in a waking dragon may be enough to wake a sleeping one before they can have a chance to do so.

Additionally, like real-world hunting, gathering magic for the dragons seems to be an activity that requires using it. Each waking of a dragon is followed by a period of high activity in which they smash everything in proximity to them – but once they hit something that puts up a significant fight, they seem to go into a kind of ‘power-saving mode’. What I suspect is happening here is that when a dragon wakes, it uses leftover energy from its hibernation to claim as much territory as possible – and then it settles down to collect all the magic from that territory, using some of that power to push outwards to claim more territory from which it can gain more magic, and so on.

To go back to your ‘starving predator’ analogy, the typical behaviour of Elder Dragons can be likened to the animal staking out a territory and then hunting out that territory, using its greater strength as it grows to claim a larger territory against weaker rivals (treating civilisations here as being a lower-rung predator that can be rival or prey). Finding an ED corpse would be akin to finding a freshly killed lion – if the predator in question wasn’t limited by stomach size, it could eat that corpse on the spot and be twice as strong once that corpse is metabolised. Even if theoretically there might be a similar amount of food within the predator’s territory, that piece of carrion means that the predator doesn’t need to expend energy in locating and killing prey.

Glint may have been alive for a long time, but she’s spent most of those centuries dining on scraps – Tyria was in an extremely low-magic state until thirteen centuries ago, and unlike the Elder Dragons Glint does not view civilisations as a potential meal, further reducing her options. If the Kralkatorrik fight had gone the other way and Glint had survived, though, it’s possible that she could have absorbed Kralkatorrik’s power and become an Elder Dragon there and then. And her children might be able to do the same.

Alrighty then, i concede to that arguement. The other matter of this idea though is the question of us trusting in that new dragon. Glint was suspect herself, and im not sure that her offspring will be as complient as she was. While Glint had the time and opportunity to grow fond of the lesser races, if we use the offspring as a tool to fight the elder specimen of her species, she will be powerful. Without the experience, wisdom or anything good from her mother. She will be a container. Thats all we know so far. Thats not reassuring.

Well, Glint was suspect before mostly because she was mysterious, and because she did use a lot of deception to cover her tracks. Now that we’ve got the full story of her origins and motivations, from sources that we’re trustworthy…

…I’d probably be more inclined to trust Glint if she was still alive than the Pale Tree. And I say this as someone who is firmly not in the camp of the ‘pale tree is a dragon champion’ or any of the other fifth-column conspiracy theories.

You are right, though, that there’s no guarantee that the child will have the wisdom and temperament of the mother. Parentage and upbringing might help in that regard, but we can’t be 100% sure. Mind you, if the power has to be contained somewhere… better something that might be friendly than something that we know is hostile.

I also have a speculation (posted here, just before the update) that the egg may be more than just an egg – Glint may have found a way to imprint her personality on it before fighting Kralkatorrik (Glint certainly knew that Kralkatorrik was going to come for her, and it would explain why one egg was kept ‘in stasis’ – that egg wasn’t intended for reproduction, but for cheating death). If that does prove to be the case, then it would make that ‘hatchling’ more trustworthy.

Why don’t we just do what the seer’s did and seal up the magic. It worked fine until the humans and their “gods” came and screwed everything up with their greed. So once we seal the magic up, we should kill all the humans to make sure the magic stays sealed.

If the gods didn’t know about the dragons, I have to ask why did they think all the magic had been sealed to begin with.

Because, as it turns out, too little magic is also bad for Tyria in the long run.

draxynnic.3719:

Well, Glint was suspect before mostly because she was mysterious, and because she did use a lot of deception to cover her tracks. Now that we’ve got the full story of her origins and motivations, from sources that we’re trustworthy…

…I’d probably be more inclined to trust Glint if she was still alive than the Pale Tree. And I say this as someone who is firmly not in the camp of the ‘pale tree is a dragon champion’ or any of the other fifth-column conspiracy theories.

You are right, though, that there’s no guarantee that the child will have the wisdom and temperament of the mother. Parentage and upbringing might help in that regard, but we can’t be 100% sure. Mind you, if the power has to be contained somewhere… better something that might be friendly than something that we know is hostile.

I also have a speculation (posted here, just before the update) that the egg may be more than just an egg – Glint may have found a way to imprint her personality on it before fighting Kralkatorrik (Glint certainly knew that Kralkatorrik was going to come for her, and it would explain why one egg was kept ‘in stasis’ – that egg wasn’t intended for reproduction, but for cheating death). If that does prove to be the case, then it would make that ‘hatchling’ more trustworthy.

I have trouble with the speculation that the zephyrites weren’t aware of Mordy’s awakening. The festival lasted quite a few weeks, and the awakening was pretty big news. Word would of had to have gotten to the Minister of Peace.

DarcShriek.5829:

Why don’t we just do what the seer’s did and seal up the magic. It worked fine until the humans and their “gods” came and screwed everything up with their greed. So once we seal the magic up, we should kill all the humans to make sure the magic stays sealed.

Because the creation of the Bloodstone and then proceeding to seal all the uncorrupted magic of the world into it, to me anyway, is towards the godly end of the magical scale. How the Seers were able to pull it off is anyone’s guess, especially if the Mursaat/Seer war happened before the sealing as well.

DarcShriek.5829:

I have trouble with the speculation that the zephyrites weren’t aware of Mordy’s awakening. The festival lasted quite a few weeks, and the awakening was pretty big news. Word would of had to have gotten to the Minister of Peace.

Strictly speaking, our characters didn’t know that the roar was Mordremoth the Elder Dragon awakening in the jungles – our characters didn’t actually see that cutscene. We just heard a dragon roar. It wasn’t until after S2E1 – which is to say, after the Zephyrites crashed – that we really confirmed what was going on. Until then, in-character there were some who figured that a dragon was stirring, but nobody had any idea where. Mr E’s letter directing us to Brisban was the first indication that anyone had made any connection whatsoever between the jungle and the roar.

More importantly, if my speculation is right (or even if it’s wrong and the egg is exactly what it appears) it’s likely that the Zephyrites have been preparing the jungle sanctuary since they recovered Glint’s remains in 1320AE. So even if, hypothetically, the Zephyrites had known Mordremoth was in the jungle and waking up as soon as that roar happened, they’d already committed six years of effort to the sanctuary, possibly to the point where it just wasn’t practical to do anything other than go ahead despite the added risk.

Erukk.1408:

DarcShriek.5829:

Why don’t we just do what the seer’s did and seal up the magic. It worked fine until the humans and their “gods” came and screwed everything up with their greed. So once we seal the magic up, we should kill all the humans to make sure the magic stays sealed.

Because the creation of the Bloodstone and then proceeding to seal all the uncorrupted magic of the world into it, to me anyway, is towards the godly end of the magical scale. How the Seers were able to pull it off is anyone’s guess, especially if the Mursaat/Seer war happened before the sealing as well.

To my knowledge the Mursaat-Seer war was quite a constant conflict that was put aside for a time to fight the dragons along with the other elder races, and was reignited after the mursaat turned tail and retreated from the world. As to how it was done, there is a speculation on this forum that the ruins of Orr, the circular structures with intricate patterns of (appearently) orichalcum inside them served as a sort of magical dinamo machine that might have had a giant part in managing to control the little remaining magic at the end of the last dragonrise. No proof of course, but its the best guess we have currently on this godly feat.

Cormac.3871:

Kralkatorik: wind / chaos

Jormag: ice / war

Primordus: Fire / growth

Splashy (bubbles): water / life

These do not make sense.

Kralkatorrik is clearly crystal and chaos. Jormag is not really a personification of war. At least no more than the other elder dragons. We all know that Primordus is fire + destruction. His minions are called Destroyers after all, and his greatest former champion was The Great Destroyer. I don’t think life would fit Bubbles, or any elder dragon for that matter. The elder dragons are not about life, they are about destruction and corruption.

I really like this theory of the Gods being the “Elder Dragons” of their world.
If we can define how they are related we could better understand magic itself.

Disclaimer: what follows it’s 100% speculation. I took ideas read all over.

Dominions of Magic:

The first similarity I can think of it’s their number (for now at least): six.
We now know that Gods and Elder Dragons both have two “dominions” (I’ll use this word from now on in absence of a better one) each.
So we should have a total of 12 dominions for the Gods and 12 for the Elder Dragons.

Ideally they would be the same 12 or else this theory loses its meaning, so I’m going ahead and taking that for granted.

Gods’ History:

Kormir ascension to godhood leaves us with the knowledge that the other 5 gods couldn’t absorb Abaddon power, they needed a new person to take his place.

We also know that Abaddon water dominion shifted to Lyssa after his defeat.

What I get from this is that dominions control can be “given” to other Gods or even to humans.
We can also speculate that no one can control more than two dominions at the same time, that’s why Kormir was needed.

Finally, we know (I don’t remember if this is confirmed or not) that Grenth had control over Ice before taking Dhuum’s place.
Dhuum and Grenth both had a singol element, respectively Death and Ice.

So, to recap:
- A God can “only” have power on one or two elements
- The control over these elements can be given to others
- All of these dominion has to be under control
- This dominions don’t have to be in specific pairs
- Then we must have between 6 and 12 Gods every time.

Elder Dragons:

If what we know about the Gods it’s also valid for the Elder Dragons we can now understand why the Elder Dragons don’t fight each other.
They can’t absorb more than two elements (the problem doesn’t lie in the quantity of power but in it’s “quality”) and they already have two each.
I’d go as far as saying that there could have been more than six dragons before, they clashed and the six remaning are the winners.

But we know that while the Gods mantain a total control over their dominions, the Elder Dragons go in a absorb-release cycle.
In an environment with a low or medium level of magic, the world can be left without anyone to control these elements.
It’s when the magic level get too high that these dominions get crazy and magic become dangerous for the world itself.
In that instant the Elder Dragons begin to awake and they start putting things under control once again.
Gods let magic run wild and then they bear with its full potential taking it inside theirselves.

So that means that if we’ll kill a fully charged Elder Dragon we’ll end up with the same situation that made Kormir become a God.
And this could also lead us to think that right now the control over the Death and Shadow dominion it’s actually vacant.
I think that Tequatl absorbed some of the magic Zhaitan released on its death and not the control over Death and Shadow.
So if we don’t find the right method to transfer their powers we could even end up needing 12 dragons…

Other marginal things:
If we could identify the 12 elements and how they relate to the bloodstones it would be ideal.
We could even get some new professions ideas from that actually.

The ones I can guess right now:
ED:
- Death
- Shadow
- Mind
- Plant

Gods:
– Life
- Wind
- Ice
- Death
- Fire
- Strenght
- Chaos
- Water
- Earth
- Secrets/Knowledge/Truth
- Spirit ?

I don’t think chaos and water truly adequately sum up Lyssa…

…However, there are also more than six gods. Lyssa is actually two gods – Lyss and Ilya – that often act as one. Dhuum has been stripped of much of his power, but is still representative of a more ‘final’ death than Grenth. And then there’s whatever Menzies has.

My suspicion, thus, is that the magic system of the gods actually has more than twelve domains. For instance, I’ve speculated that Life, and the healing and resurrection magic it is associated with, was alien to Tyria, and thus, with Dwayna’s departure, the Life domain left the world as well and that’s why that kind of magic has disappeared.

Under this regime, Lyss and Ilya might have had three domains between them, while the others all had two each – so they were capable of picking up Water, but not absorbing Abaddon entirely. Alternatively, Lyss and Ilya might have traded something to Kormir in exchange for water – Spirit, perhaps.

Finally, it might be that Water isn’t actually a domain in the system spanned by the gods, and it’s just something they throw in for the sake of elemental completeness.

Interesting theory. From what we know it’s very possible (almost a fact) that the Gods are simply long lived and very powerful. The only question thus is where did they come from and where did they get the power? Granted some got it from their predecessors but you know what I’m getting at, where did the power originate? So Konig’s theory is as good as any.

What I’m wondering though is 2 things:
What happened to all the dragons? Currently it seems like the Elder Dragons just happened to be on Tyria first with the natural ability to absorb magic and things naturally followed from there. So they’re like dinosaurs that didn’t die out. But I’m wondering if they directly or indirectly caused the death of all other dragons, cause dragons happen to be few and far between (even though the seem like apex predators and wound be pretty numerous).
Second, what is meant by chaos, in terms of too much magic? Will the planet explode outright, or will we end up in a situation where every ambient creature has the power to blow up mountains, and rip the earth asunder?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Underdark.3726:

The Tyria in the center of the diagram is the world or the continent? Cos what I don’t understand is that if we are talking about the world why are all 6 dragons so close to each other? We can now see the map of the world and is quite big, so why are they all around the continent of Tyria? If we talking about the continent only what does that mean? That the rest of the world does not have magic or that there are other 6 dragons circling around other continents? Or is there some other thing that I’m missing?

We’re talking about Tyria the planet. There may be some reason that the dragons are concentrated around Tyria the continent, perhaps because the presence of so many intelligent, magic based races caused them to come here during the last rise – better food to eat on. Or perhaps they had already destroyed the rest of the world and this was the last place they stopped over? (Or it just doesn’t make that much sense because it’s a video game and Arenanet doesn’t always seem to think things through super well)

Personally I’m of the mind that they just ate all the magic everywhere else and Tyria the continent just happen to be the last place where magic was left. Ideally all start as far away as possible, eat all the magic and then converge on a single spot where magic is left. When they wake up (and they’re close to each other) they eat all the magic and then migrate away from each other eating all the magikittenil they’re as far away from each other as possible and then the cycle continues, a endless migration towards and away from each other.

Just as a regular musing on the phylosophy of elements, not entirely related to the GW2 universe, just some thinking i have:

The original 4 elements of Plato mostly explain the 3 stages of matter, (earth-solid, water-liquid, air-gas) and the fourth “element” fire, being the concept of change, or basicly Temperature, the key between the three stages of matter.

Another thought concerning the element of Life or Preservation. This element is usually associated to be the polar opposite of Death and Destruction, rightly so. However when it comes to undead creatures, we usually immedietly jump to the conclusion that undeath is connected to Death. I cant imagine why, though. Its un-death. If anything, undeath is the unnatural preservation of something that should be dead. Death is as much about change as Fire, the transition between stages, while Preservation and Necromancy are about keeping the status quo permanently if possible.

By this viewpoint, the difference between a healer and a necromancer is mostly who, what and why they practice their arts on. While a healer uses aspects of preservation and restoration on the living to keep them alive, their own souls in their own body, healthy and all, a necromancer would use other alien (or the original subjects) souls/spirits/raw life-force to animate magically preserved dead matter, be it a fresh corpse, or a construct made of flesh (GW minions) or something else (golems).