The magic used by every single being, from the various races up to the most powerful entities, such as the Elder Dragons, is the same and comes from the same source: the various natural aspects of magic, mostly visible flowing through the ley lines. The more magic one possesses, the more powerful his influence on lesser beings will be, a fact demonstrable by the Elder Dragons’ spheres of influence. But what exactly is a sphere of influence?
Let’s consider Jormag, the Elder Ice Dragon: the immense amount of Ice Magic he absorbed not only transformed his physical appearance but granted him the ability to imbue other beings with this magic, transforming them and exposing them to his mind. While the Sons of Svanir worship Jormag, their minds aren’t really subjugated until their bodies are imbued with the dragon’s magic; as we can witness in the personal story step Mightier than the Sword the Sons of Svanir flee from their corrupted brother, Steag Frostbeard:

Steag Frostbeard: The Dragon’s Blood blade cannot be defeated! I will destroy you!
Son of Svanir: Run! He’s lost his mind! The sword will turn us all into monsters!

More than anything, I think the corruption regards the minds.

Let’s consider what Zhaitan did with King Reza: the Elder Undead Dragon firstly needed to imbue his body with death magic (possibly shadow magic too), transforming it, making it vulnerable to its influence; once the body was corrupted, it proceeded to subjugate Reza’s mind and ultimately control it, constraining it to persecute its will (it’s worth noting that this “mind corruption” will last even after the dragon’s death). Ultimately, only Caladbolg was able to cleanse Reza’s mind. To add on this, both Twitchy, the purified Undead Chicken, and Glint retained their corrupted body once their mind was cleansed.

So, the “sphere of influence” is the aspect of magic an Elder Dragon is able to impose its will on; before the equilibrium was broken, before Mordremoth and Zhaitan died, these “spheres” were finely distributed between the Elder Dragons (as they had countless millennia to adjust).

Let’s consider Primordus: destroyers are created by shaping elements related to the Fire Dragon’s magic, they can be considered elementals, or constructs, and as such their minds are subjugated from the start by Primordus. More recently we’ve witnessed destroyers displaying death and plant magic, but I doubt Primordus has full control over said magics, more specifically they’re not under its “sphere of influence”: he still needs to create destroyers first.

With all this knowledge, I could argue that, on a much smaller scale, elementals animated by elementalists are also corrupted by their summoners: elementals’ minds are way inferior to that of the spellcasters who animated them, giving to the latter control over them.

With the human gods we come in contact with an example of corruption. Let’s consider Grenth with the Seven Reapers and Abaddon with the margonites: unlike elder dragons, they don’t force their will over beings; they instead reward those who prove loyal and worthy by imbuing (blessing) them with their respective kinds of magic. This process could anyway provide the corrupted with a deeper connection to the respective god’s mind.

Another example of corruption would be Shiro with the Shiro’ken: abusing his powers as an Envoy, he summoned back to the mortal world spirits of departed mortals, provided said spirits with a mortal body and forced them to his service (bound spirits).

P.S. Honourable mention: the dwarves’ transformation following the Great Dwarf’s Ritual (yes, another example of corruption).

EDIT: I expanded on these ideas on this same thread (link to specific comment).

I don’t think all dragons corrupt beings in the same way.

King Reza shouldn’t have got any “mind” cause he’s long dead, he shouldn’t even have his body due to the Cataclysm had blown even the entire Orr underwater. He should have been in the Underworld for a long while like many Orr people. Zhaitan pretty much “animated” him back. From those Norn crew we can see Zhaitan might not corrupt soul, it just corrupt the body and gave them the previous intelligence and memory.

Mordremoth control his minions with whisper, they knew what they were doing but could not help. I doubt they would remain under any control once it’s dead. None of its champions have any “chain of command”.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Abbaddon_God_Statue%22_concept_art_1.jpg

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Abbaddon_God_Statue%22_concept_art_2.jpg

Interestingly, DSD might have some influence on Abaddon.

Slowpokeking.8720:

I don’t think all dragons corrupt beings in the same way.

The only difference is how they corrupt the body, which is dictated by their kinds of magic.

Slowpokeking.8720:

King Reza shouldn’t have got any “mind” cause he’s long dead, he shouldn’t even have his body due to the Cataclysm had blown even the entire Orr underwater. He should have been in the Underworld for a long while like many Orr people.

First off, the Cataclysm didn’t “blow up” Orr, it made it sink.
The remains of Reza’s body were still there, in Azabe Qabar, we know Zhaitan corrupted the body. And of course King Reza has a mind, it’s the mind, which projects itself as a spirit, that travels through the various Realms once the mortal body dies. Most likely Reza’s spirit was still confined to Tyria, still linked to its body.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Mordremoth control his minions with whisper, they knew what they were doing but could not help. I doubt they would remain under any control once it’s dead.

The whisper you are thinking about regards the singular relationship with the sylvari: the dragon slowly torments sylvari’s minds (by the way, sylvari are in a sense already imbued with plant and mind magic) until they’re weakened enough to fall to the dragon’s will.
And of course Mordrem’s minds remained constrained following Mordremoth’s death, we know that.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Interestingly, DSD might have some influence on Abaddon.

Really? The presence of serpentine creatures in those representations is a sign of Abaddon being influenced by the DSD? With this reasoning Melandru was influenced by Mordremoth because half of her body is made of “plants” (or even Balthazar being influenced by Primordus because he’s surrounded by flames). Doesn’t make sense.

Not likely, Mordrem Guards could even break Mordremoth’ control for a while.

Sock.2785:

First off, the Cataclysm didn’t “blow up” Orr, it made it sink.
The remains of Reza’s body were still there, in Azabe Qabar, we know Zhaitan corrupted the body. And of course King Reza has a mind, it’s the mind, which projects itself as a spirit, that travels through the various Realms once the mortal body dies. Most likely Reza’s spirit was still confined to Tyria, still linked to its body.

He stole it from Arah, taking it to his tower, and there, unleashed its might upon the land. With a flash of light and explosion of flame the nation of Orr crumbled and was lost into the depths of the sea.

If the power was strong enough to sink the continent, there is no way flesh bodies could not being vaporized into dust. King Raza had been dead for more than 100 years when Zhaitan awoke, why would his soul still be there rather than went to the Underworld?

The whisper you are thinking about regards the singular relationship with the sylvari: the dragon slowly torments sylvari’s minds (by the way, sylvari are in a sense already imbued with plant and mind magic) until they’re weakened enough to fall to the dragon.
And of course Mordrem remain under control following Mordremoth’s death, we know that.

Under whose control? The dragon is dead.

In one of the quests, a Mordrem guard would tell you he was always there, but could not control.

Really? The presence of serpentine creatures in those representations is a sign of Abaddon being influenced by the DSD? With this reasoning Melandru was influenced by Mordremoth because half of her body is made of “plants” (or even Balthazar being influenced by Primordus because he’s surrounded by flames). Doesn’t make sense.

But no dragon was present on any of their transformation. Abaddon himself don’t use serpent creatures as minions as well.

Slowpokeking.8720:

If the power was strong enough to sink the continent, there is no way flesh bodies could not being vaporized into dust. King Raza had been dead for more than 100 years when Zhaitan awoke, why would his soul still be there rather than went to the Underworld?

The Cataclysm didn’t act like an atomic bomb, we can witness the Vizier’s tower itself still being up anyway. Regarding the spirits still being linked to their bodies, I think what happened is similar in a way to what happened with the Foefire (which, by the way, was also caused by orrian magic): the souls invested by the Cataclysm were constrained on Tyria.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Under whose control? The dragon is dead. In one of the quests, a Mordrem guard would tell you he was always there, but could not control.

You quoted me before I was able to modify my sentence, since I noticed it could’ve been misinterpreted. Once a mind is subjugated it will remain so even after the dragon’s death. And again, the sylvari are a pretty unique case and the Mordrem guards you are mentioning where still struggling, not yet completely subjugated by the dragon.

Slowpokeking.8720:

But no dragon was present on any of their transformation. Abaddon himself don’t use serpent creatures as minions as well.

No idea what you’re talking about.

Sock.2785:

The Cataclysm didn’t act like an atomic bomb, we can witness the Vizier’s tower itself still being up anyway. Regarding the spirits still being linked to their bodies, I think what happened is similar in a way to what happened with the Foefire (which, by the way, was also caused by orrian magic): the souls invested by the Cataclysm were constrained on Tyria.

But it did, Vizier and his tower might be still there due to them being in the central of the ritual. All the other buildings were very badly damaged.

Foefire was totally different than Cataclysm, it destroyed their bodies into dust but left their soul as ghost, which didn’t happen to Orr at all. Why would their bodies and soul still be there 100 years after the ritual? It makes little sense at all.

You quoted me before I was able to modify my sentence, since I noticed it could’ve been misinterpreted. Once a mind is subjugated it will remain so even after the dragon’s death. And again, the sylvari are a pretty unique case and the Mordrem guards you are mentioning where still struggling, not yet completely subjugated by the dragon.

That’s not what happened with Mordremoth, according to that guy, Mordremoth control them and gave direct order to them. Without his influence, that guy regained his mind, he made clear that “He wanted to obey”, which mean it was the dragon giving order to them, but without the dragon, what to obey?

No idea what you’re talking about.

Abaddon had water formed dragon with him in the pics, the other gods didn’t.

Slowpokeking.8720:

But it did, Vizier and his tower might be still there due to them being in the central of the ritual. All the other buildings were very badly damaged.

Foefire was totally different than Cataclysm, it destroyed their bodies into dust but left their soul as ghost, which didn’t happen to Orr at all. Why would their bodies and soul still be there 100 years after the ritual? It makes little sense at all.

All the structural damages we see are a consequence of the sunking.
I’m not saying the Foefire and the Cataclysm are the same thing, I’m just suggesting that coming both from orrian artifacts some characteristics might be shared (for example, the blue flames are), specifically the binding to Tyria of the invested souls.

Slowpokeking.8720:

That’s not what happened with Mordremoth, according to that guy, Mordremoth control them and gave direct order to them. Without his influence, that guy regained his mind, he made clear that “He wanted to obey”, which mean it was the dragon giving order to them, but without the dragon, what to obey?

Again… the sylvari are unique creatures, their link to the Dream grants them a resistance to the dragon’s mind, but like every other creature when fully subjugated they’ll stay like that even after the dragon’s death (at least not until their minds get cleansed, like what happened with Twitchy, the purified undead chicken).

Slowpokeking.8720:

Abaddon had water formed dragon with him in the pics, the other gods didn’t.

I really don’t see how those creatures can be envisioned as dragons. If anything they resemble marine serpents and it would make sense, since Abaddon was the god of Water.

Sock.2785:

All the structural damages we see are a consequence of the sunking.
I’m not saying the Foefire and the Cataclysm are the same thing, I’m just suggesting that coming both from orrian artifacts some characteristics might be shared (for example, the blue flames are), specifically the binding to Tyria of the invested souls.

What? You mean the buildings are immune to the fire explosion? If the sunking could even damage the buildings that much, why would the bodies still be there after 100 years?

Again… the sylvari are unique creatures, their link to the Dream grants them a resistance to the dragon’s mind, but like every other creature when fully subjugated they’ll stay like that even after the dragon’s death (at least not until their minds get cleansed, like what happened with Twitchy, the purified undead chicken).

What every other creatures? Other than some plant, they were nothing but clones, they were not corrupted, but created directly by the dragon. Even Sylvari was not “corrupted”, they were dragon creations.

I really don’t see how those creatures can be envisioned as dragons. If anything they resemble marine serpents and it would make sense, since Abaddon was the god of Water.

They are and they resemble to DSD’s early concept a lot.

Slowpokeking.8720:

What? You mean the buildings are immune to the fire explosion? If the sunking could even damage the buildings that much, why would the bodies still be there after 100 years?

What kind of structural damage would you expect from a sudden burst of (magical) flames? Are you saying the sinking of an entire peninsula, comparable to an apocalyptic earthquake, is less likely to produce structural damage than some flames? And regarding the bodies the real question is: why there would not be remnants of the bodies, especially given the high amount of orrian risen seen deep in Orr (think about the various orrian nobles we encounter)? By the way the Cataclysm happened 258 years ago.

Slowpokeking.8720:

What every other creatures? Other than some plant, they were nothing but clones, they were not corrupted, but created directly by the dragon. Even Sylvari was not “corrupted”, they were dragon creations.

If anything it’s the Trees (like the physical Pale Tree) that may come from Mordremoth, the sylvari seem to spawn from the Dream (this gets out of topic, I explored this in another thread) and aren’t corrupted by Mordremoth when they’re born, not even Malyck was (who’s unconnected to the Pale Tree nor protected by it).
Don’t undervalue the plants, but I can think of a couple: the mordrem wolves and trolls. Anyway, every mordrem must be corrupted by Mordremoth before it can go through the cloning process.

Slowpokeking.8720:

They are and they resemble to DSD’s early concept a lot.

That’s an early concept art for something that’s not even been implemented in game yet nor does it have a clear description of how it looks, and honestly will resemble those serpentine creatures just if you really want it to.
Ultimately they really don’t resemble dragons, but to each their own.

What kind of structural damage would you expect from a sudden burst of (magical) flames? Are you saying the sinking of an entire peninsula, comparable to an apocalyptic earthquake, is less likely to produce structural damage than some flames? And regarding the bodies the real question is: why there would not be remnants of the bodies, especially given the high amount of orrian risen seen deep in Orr (think about the various orrian nobles we encounter)? By the way the Cataclysm happened 258 years ago.

If it could sink Orr, then the buildings should be all badly damaged.

Because they would all be vaporized and rot into nothing before Zhaitan’s Rise.

If anything it’s the Trees (like the physical Pale Tree) that may come from Mordremoth, the sylvari seem to spawn from the Dream (this gets out of topic, I explored this in another thread) and aren’t corrupted by Mordremoth when they’re born, not even Malyck was (who’s unconnected to the Pale Tree nor protected by it).
Don’t undervalue the plants, but I can think of a couple: the mordrem wolves and trolls. Anyway, every mordrem must be corrupted by Mordremoth before it can go through the cloning process.

They were dragon creations, it’s very clear since it was revealed. They weren’t “corrupted” but born to be dragon minions.

That’s an early concept art for something that’s not even been implemented in game yet nor does it have a clear description of how it looks, and honestly will resemble those serpentine creatures just if you really want it to.
Ultimately they really don’t resemble dragons, but to each their own.

It could be a possibility that the 2 are connected.

Slowpokeking.8720:

If it could sink Orr, then the buildings should be all badly damaged.

Orr sunk, that’s a fact.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Because they would all be vaporized and rot into nothing before Zhaitan’s Rise.

We know for a fact that Zhaitan needs corpses to spread its corruption (the Risen Wraiths might seem like an exception, but they’re in reality a result of undead humans transforming, as confirmed here). We know that when he awakened not only did he rise the nation of Orr from the sea, but he immediately formed an undead army. It follows that dead bodies must have been present on the former human nation once it was risen from the sea.

Slowpokeking.8720:

They were dragon creations, it’s very clear since it was revealed. They weren’t “corrupted” but born to be dragon minions.

You almost got it there when you said “born to be dragon minions”. They aren’t a creation of the dragon, in fact I doubt even the Trees are. Once awakened, he would just use them, exploit them, hence corrupt them.

Slowpokeking.8720:

It could be a possibility that the 2 are connected.

Frankly, I don’t see it as a possibility but, again, to each their own.

Zhaitan was able to pull spirits out of the Underworld and infuse them into Risen champions, such as the Eyes of Zhaitan and the corrupted priests. Grenth was not happy about this. (This is a plot point in the Grenth cathedral personal story instance.)

Regarding the Cataclysm… it was a feature of the Cataclysm even in GW1’s time that the people of Orr were made into undead by the Cataclysm. The bodies were still around when Zhaitan rose because they were either buried and preserved (the older kings, queens and princes that Zhaitan corrupted) or were already walking around as undead when Zhaitan awoke.

@draxynnic: I’d argue that the pulling of the Keeper of the Shrine’s spirit from the Underworld is an isolated case: firstly the Keeper himself was strictly linked to Grenth (and, by the way, we see the Keeper’s own body being corrupted), secondly just in the Cathedral of Silence, being in the vicinity of Grenth’s powers (the god’s power is akin to that of Zhaitan), was the Elder Undead Dragon able to pull the Keeper’s spirit from the Underworld.

The only one transformed by the Cataclysm was the Vizier himself, who turned into the Undead Lich. Everyone else died as a consequence of the sinking (but not before being invested by the Cataclysm’s spell, which definitely did something to their souls); if anything the Lich might have later reanimated some orrians but couldn’t really control them without the Scepter of Orr (described as a staff that controls the mind world).

As we learn from Jutu, many of those slain by the Cataclysm were trapped in the Realm of Torment, but ultimately the bodies of his people were cursed to an underwater grave (not turning undead).

Regarding the Eyes of Zhaitan, we can clearly see King Reza’s body (and other orrian high nobles) being constrained behind the big eye (the eye itself could be part of Zhaitan’s body); the body was needed to Zhaitan.

P.S. To go back on the main topic, each Elder Dragon constrains the minds of those corrupted in the body; how they alter the body is the only thing that differs between them.

draxynnic.3719:

Zhaitan was able to pull spirits out of the Underworld and infuse them into Risen champions, such as the Eyes of Zhaitan and the corrupted priests. Grenth was not happy about this. (This is a plot point in the Grenth cathedral personal story instance.)

Regarding the Cataclysm… it was a feature of the Cataclysm even in GW1’s time that the people of Orr were made into undead by the Cataclysm. The bodies were still around when Zhaitan rose because they were either buried and preserved (the older kings, queens and princes that Zhaitan corrupted) or were already walking around as undead when Zhaitan awoke.

We don’t see him do that, if he could do that why does he need to bring corpse to make new Risen? We don’t see him doing the same thing as Shiro in GW1.

Yes, a few got turned into undead, but that’s closely after the nation’s destruction. Most of them are gone with the explosion and the 100 years decaying.

How could the bodies be still there if the nation was blown out and not rot after 100 years underwater? It makes 0 sense.

Sock.2785:

@draxynnic: I’d argue that the pulling of the Keeper of the Shrine’s spirit from the Underworld is an isolated case: firstly the Keeper himself was strictly linked to Grenth (and, by the way, we see the Keeper’s own body being corrupted), secondly just in the Cathedral of Silence, being in the vicinity of Grenth’s powers (the god’s power is akin to that of Zhaitan), was the Elder Undead Dragon able to pull the Keeper’s spirit from the Underworld.

If that was an isolated case, then how did King Reza’s spirit end up in the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan? For that to happen, one of three things must be the case:

1) Reza’s ghost was floating around the sunken ruins of Orr from the Cataclysm until Zhaitan’s rise.

2) Reza was made into undead by the Cataclysm, and Zhaitan was able to corrupt him then.

3) Zhaitan was able to pull Reza’s spirit out of the afterlife just like the priest of Grenth.

Considering that the other Eyes were formed from older Kings and Queens of Orr, it seems likely that the third is the case (although it’s possible that the reason why King Reza made the strongest Eye was because his soul was available to be trapped)

The only one transformed by the Cataclysm was the Vizier himself, who turned into the Undead Lich. Everyone else died as a consequence of the sinking (but not before being invested by the Cataclysm’s spell, which definitely did something to their souls); if anything the Lich might have later reanimated some orrians but couldn’t really control them without the Scepter of Orr (described as a staff that controls the mind world).

The Prophecies Manuscripts say that at least some Orrians rose as undead after the Cataclysm. Now, in-universe knowledge of what exactly happened in Orr between the Cataclysm and the start of postsearing Prophecies is dubious, so it’s possible that the undead we saw was animated by Khilbron. However, it was certainly believed that the undead rising was spontaneous, and there was something eerie about the waters over Orr throughout the period where it was underwater (this is talked about towards the start of Sea of Sorrows), indicating that there was more to the Cataclysm itself than just a big explosion.

Khilbron emphatically did not need the Scepter of Orr to raise and control undead. He clearly had control over them, as the Lich Lord, in cutscenes soon after the PCs arrived in Kryta, while he was launching an undead invasion. He claims, in Sanctum Cay, that the Scepter gives him control over the undead… and it may be true that this is among the Scepter’s powers, but basically he’s using the Scepter to hide the fact that he had control over the undead all along.

Slowpokeking.8720:

We don’t see him do that, if he could do that why does he need to bring corpse to make new Risen? We don’t see him doing the same thing as Shiro in GW1.

My assumption is that he needed to use the body as a tether to pull them back. If he had the body, and he thought the target’s soul was worth the expenditure of magic to retrieve, he could. If he didn’t have the body, though, the target’s soul was safe.

Yes, a few got turned into undead, but that’s closely after the nation’s destruction. Most of them are gone with the explosion and the 100 years decaying.

How could the bodies be still there if the nation was blown out and not rot after 100 years underwater? It makes 0 sense.

As noted above, Sea of Sorrows makes it clear that there’s something uncanny about the waters of sunken Orr:

Cobiah could see a darkness on the horizon, a place where the waters turned into moving shadows beneath the storm. The sky there was green with sickly storms and black with clouds, and lightning flashed in the depths like twisting eels fighting in clouded waters.

“they say the water there is as black as night, like ink’s been poured into the waves. It never gets lighter, and the sun never warms it. Sailors have used Orrian water to freeze things even in the Maguuma Jungle’s heat. Just one drop turns meat into jerky.”

Now, the second quote might have been exaggeration, but the first quote is a direct observation, and it seems pretty clear that there’s something magical about the area even then. I wouldn’t consider it farfetched to think that bodies – undead or truly dead – were preserved. Albeit possibly in the form of jerky, but that fits the withered forms of the Orrian Risen.

draxynnic.3719:

If that was an isolated case, then how did King Reza’s spirit end up in the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan?

All the scenarios you proposed are interesting and could have happened:

1) Reza’s ghost was floating around the sunken ruins of Orr from the Cataclysm until Zhaitan’s rise.

As I proposed earlier, the Cataclysm’s spell could possess similar features to the Foefire, being that both come from orrian artifacts: the blue flames are shared; the ability to trap souls on specific planes of existance could be another. So in this case, Reza’s spirit, like that of many others, would be constrained on Tyria (in order to assist the Undead Lich “work” of undead turning).

2) Reza was made into undead by the Cataclysm, and Zhaitan was able to corrupt him then.

This would provide an explanation to how the bodies survived all these years, but it seems the Cataclysm’s spell didn’t turn those invested into undead, if anything, as you pointed out, it generated an aura in the area to preserve the dead bodies (for the Undead Lich to use). Regarding specifically Reza, I doubt he was already turned undead when Zhaitan went looking for his body. He was firstly risen by Zhaitan.

3) Zhaitan was able to pull Reza’s spirit out of the afterlife just like the priest of Grenth.

I guess with afterlife you mean the Underworld. We know this scenario most likely happened with the Keeper of the Shrine, but, as I said before, it worked just when in vicinity of Grenth’s power (where access to spirits in the Underworld would be easier).

draxynnic.3719:

The Prophecies Manuscripts say that at least some Orrians rose as undead after the Cataclysm. Now, in-universe knowledge of what exactly happened in Orr between the Cataclysm and the start of postsearing Prophecies is dubious, so it’s possible that the undead we saw was animated by Khilbron.

Well, as you said information is unclear, so ultimately we can tend towards one explanation or another, and can’t be totally sure. Same can be said for the Vizier and the Scepter of Orr.

I put forward the three scenarios knowing each is plausible. I think the fact that older Kings and Queens were also made into Eyes of Zhaitan suggests the third scenario… but as I also acknowledged, it could be that the reason Reza became the strongest Eye was because Zhaitan managed to nab his soul as well.

However, there’s nothing in the Cathedral of Silence instance to suggest that there’s anything special about the location that allows spirits to be stolen from the Mists from there and not elsewhere. Even if there was, we see cases elsewhere where Zhaitan makes use of a temple to make more powerful minions: if Zhaitan found he could steal souls using the Cathedral of Silence, it’s likely that he would make use of that property to steal more souls than just the shrine’s keeper.

Regarding the Scepter of Orr: If you have Guild Wars 1, revisit the cinematic at the end of Gates of Kryta. It’s clear that the Lich Lord (ie, Khilbron) has control over the undead without the Scepter.

The reason he claims otherwise is that it would raise too much suspicion about his motives if it was revealed that he had control of the undead all along, so he claims the Scepter gives him that power so people don’t ask questions like “if the Vizier can control the undead, why doesn’t he stop the undead invasion of Kryta?” While the PCs are pretty gullible in Prophecies, it’s likely that would have been enough to have second thoughts about the guy who can control the undead that have been rampaging across Kryta, particularly since that guy was at ground zero of an explosion that killed everyone else and which, one way or another, has been the source of said undead invasion.

Sock.2785:

The magic used by every single being, from the various races up to the most powerful entities, such as the Elder Dragons, is the same and comes from the same source: the various natural aspects of magic, mostly visible flowing through the ley lines.

I would question this. If this were the case then why would people repeatedly call it “dragon magic” and “draconic energies”?

Similar with the gods – they had fire magic, ice magic, etc. but their magic is repeatedly called “divine magic”. This implies that there are three overarching forms of magic which gets divided into the same or similar “spectrums” – ley line, divine, and draconic – arguably a fourth kind too (Mists).

Sock.2785:

Let’s consider Jormag, the Elder Ice Dragon: the immense amount of Ice Magic he absorbed not only transformed his physical appearance but granted him the ability to imbue other beings with this magic, transforming them and exposing them to his mind.

Nothing says Jormag’s appearance is icy…

While probable given Zhaitan and Mordremoth, not definite. After all, there was nothing in Primordus’ appearance in GW1 that screamed “Fire” and nothing in Kralkatorrik’s appearance in GW1 that screamed “Crystal”.

Sock.2785:

While the Sons of Svanir worship Jormag, their minds aren’t really subjugated until their bodies are imbued with the dragon’s magic; as we can witness in the personal story step Mightier than the Sword the Sons of Svanir flee from their corrupted brother, Steag Frostbeard:

Steag Frostbeard: The Dragon’s Blood blade cannot be defeated! I will destroy you!
Son of Svanir: Run! He’s lost his mind! The sword will turn us all into monsters!

More than anything, I think the corruption regards the minds.

Slight caveat:

Many Sons of Svanir can control icebrood. Such as in their second largest stronghold of The Barrowstead or within Honor of the Waves.

Sock.2785:

Let’s consider what Zhaitan did with King Reza: the Elder Undead Dragon firstly needed to imbue his body with death magic (possibly shadow magic too), transforming it, making it vulnerable to its influence; once the body was corrupted, it proceeded to subjugate Reza’s mind and ultimately control it, constraining it to persecute its will (it’s worth noting that this “mind corruption” will last even after the dragon’s death). Ultimately, only Caladbolg was able to cleanse Reza’s mind. To add on this, both Twitchy, the purified Undead Chicken, and Glint retained their corrupted body once their mind was cleansed.

I don’t think Reza’s mind was ever subjugated given the dialogue. It seemed more like in that case, the body was a prison with its own personality. Unlike the Legendary Eye of Zhaitan in Straits, the Sovereign Eye never goes claiming to be a king of Orr.

Sock.2785:

So, the “sphere of influence” is the aspect of magic an Elder Dragon is able to impose its will on; before the equilibrium was broken, before Mordremoth and Zhaitan died, these “spheres” were finely distributed between the Elder Dragons (as they had countless millennia to adjust).

Or so we presume. The Elder Dragons may have 2 spheres of influence each, but that doesn’t mean that there are only 12 spheres of influence. It may be that the rest were either taken out of the equation (Bloodstones, maybe krait obelisks and other things too) or were too divided among the Elder Dragons to be considered by the Priory a “third sphere of influence”.

-bloody kitten of body length-

Sock.2785:

With all this knowledge, I could argue that, on a much smaller scale, elementals animated by elementalists are also corrupted by their summoners: elementals’ minds are way inferior to that of the spellcasters who animated them, giving to the latter control over them.

There are a vast number of differences between elementals and destroyers. For starters, the hive mind. Elementals are controlled, but do not have a telepathic link to the will of the elementalist.

Secondly, they are of the natural elements, while the Elder Dragons’ versions are all unique variations – Jormag’s ice, for example, is black and blue and shimmers (very akin to the compressed ice of a glacier’s underside which comes out a dark blue, but it seems to be liquid beneath the exterior coating with how it moves).

Thirdly, and by far most importantly, the elementals are created from the elements without change. Dragon corruption always results in a material changing, even if the material is of the same as the corruption form – e.g., ice being corrupted by Jormag looks drastically different just as lava being corrupted by Primordus does between before and after.

Sock.2785:

With the human gods we come in contact with an example of corruption. Let’s consider Grenth with the Seven Reapers and Abaddon with the margonites: unlike elder dragons, they don’t force their will over beings; they instead reward those who prove loyal and worthy by imbuing (blessing) them with their respective kinds of magic. This process could anyway provide the corrupted with a deeper connection to the respective god’s mind.

Another example of corruption would be Shiro with the Shiro’ken: abusing his powers as an Envoy, he summoned back to the mortal world spirits of departed mortals, provided said spirits with a mortal body and forced them to his service (bound spirits).

While the Margonites case does seem irrely similar to dragon corruption (like the Foefire and Rite of the Great Dwarf), the reapers does not. They are souls, simple as that. Their appearance no more unique than the Shock Phantoms and other similar soul-based undead of GW1.

Similarly, the Shiro’ken are by no means corruption either. Corruption is the change of materials from one form to another at its purest sense. They are binding souls into constructs that Shiro controls – this is no different than what the mursaat did with soul batteries, or what necromancers do with the more advanced necromancy. This does not affect the victim’s mind and it does not change the material’s composition.

draxynnic.3719:

My assumption is that he needed to use the body as a tether to pull them back. If he had the body, and he thought the target’s soul was worth the expenditure of magic to retrieve, he could. If he didn’t have the body, though, the target’s soul was safe.

But there shouldn’t be bodies left after Cataclysm and the 100 years.

As noted above, Sea of Sorrows makes it clear that there’s something uncanny about the waters of sunken Orr:

Now, the second quote might have been exaggeration, but the first quote is a direct observation, and it seems pretty clear that there’s something magical about the area even then. I wouldn’t consider it farfetched to think that bodies – undead or truly dead – were preserved. Albeit possibly in the form of jerky, but that fits the withered forms of the Orrian Risen.

But most of them should be vaporized by the Cataclysm already. Also even if the water is cold, it’s impossible to keep the corpses from decaying for 100 years without special procedure.

Konig Des Todes.2086

I would question this. If this were the case then why would people repeatedly call it “dragon magic” and “draconic energies”?

Let’s start by saying that mind and magic are intertwined; when magic comes from a specific source (a specific mind) it will be linked to that source. People’s beliefs can be fallacious: in the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal we learn the Inquest thought they were dealing with chaos magic; Scarlet referred to it as dragon energy; in reality they were dealing with ley lines. In a sense though Scarlet wasn’t that far off: the various aspects of magic, which can and do flow through the ley lines, are a form of sustainment for the Elder Dragons, given that they obtain energy from magic (hence dragon energy). There’s just ley line magic (or the various natural aspects of magic).

Konig Des Todes.2086

[…] the Elder Dragons’ versions are all unique variations – Jormag’s ice, for example, is black and blue and shimmers (very akin to the compressed ice of a glacier’s underside which comes out a dark blue, but it seems to be liquid beneath the exterior coating with how it moves).
Thirdly, and by far most importantly, the elementals are created from the elements without change. Dragon corruption always results in a material changing, even if the material is of the same as the corruption form – e.g., ice being corrupted by Jormag looks drastically different just as lava being corrupted by Primordus does between before and after.

To visualize what happens with the “physical corruption” (which happens with dragon minions but also with the margonites and the seven reapers) let me try to use an analogy: consider taking a glass full of water and starting to puor salt into it; if you keep adding it you will reach a point were it will no longer dissolve in the solution and the salt will eventually start to crystallize. Upon comparison with a normal glass of salted water (non supersaturated) it will look different, but in the end we have the same salt in both glasses, just present in different forms and concentrations. If we now equate the salt to Jormag’s magic and the glass of water to an ice elemental, it’s clear that in icebrood elementals magic may be present in different concentration and may act in different ways, but it’s ultimately the same magic used by all other magic users; it just happens that Jormag has access to an immense amount of it (additionally it might know how to use it in unique ways which it had time to learn through the countless millennia).

Konig Des Todes.2086

Similar with the gods – they had fire magic, ice magic, etc. but their magic is repeatedly called “divine magic”.

The only real divine thing we come in contact with is “divine fire”, a spell of unclear origins.

Konig Des Todes.2086

This implies that there are three overarching forms of magic which gets divided into the same or similar “spectrums” – ley line, divine, and draconic – arguably a fourth kind too (Mists)

Couldn’t disagree more on this view. What exists is the various natural aspects of magic (which we see flow through the ley lines in a plasmatic state) which every being in Tyria’s universe (the actual universe) has access to, including humans, charr, Elder Dragons or the human gods (regarding the Mists, a whole thread could be opened on them, but we just don’t know how they function and if there’s a specifical magical aspect (possibly it’s aether) connected to their “protomatter”).

Konig Des Todes.2086

Nothing says Jormag’s appearance is icy…
While probable given Zhaitan and Mordremoth, not definite. After all, there was nothing in Primordus’ appearance in GW1 that screamed “Fire” and nothing in Kralkatorrik’s appearance in GW1 that screamed “Crystal”.

Of course, we don’t know yet what the remaining Elder Dragon’s spheres of influence are, that was just for the sake of argument. Regarding this though, I’d argue that from how Primordus was presented, it somehow “screamed” Fire.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Slight caveat:
Many Sons of Svanir can control icebrood. Such as in their second largest stronghold of The Barrowstead or within Honor of the Waves.

Does this erase the fact that those Sons of Svanir ran for their own lives from their corrupted brother? I don’t really understand your caveat here.

-continues-

Konig Des Todes.2086

Or so we presume. The Elder Dragons may have 2 spheres of influence each, but that doesn’t mean that there are only 12 spheres of influence. It may be that the rest were either taken out of the equation (Bloodstones, maybe krait obelisks and other things too) or were too divided among the Elder Dragons to be considered by the Priory a “third sphere of influence”.

Given the nature of the Bloodstone (why and how the Seers created it), I really doubt it had a sphere of influence associated to it, even when the human gods fragmented it (would you explain the krait obelisks and “other things”?).
If we assume there are multiple lesser aspects of magic, they might all fall under one sphere of influence; what do I mean by “lesser”? To recall the “magic is like light” analogy: different shades of the same colour belong to the same main colour. So, while there are only twelve spheres of influence, the various aspects of magic might be more (afterall, we distinguish only between seven main colours, tending to call their various shades with a single name, but there are many more).
On a side note, each natural element, and their magical counterpart, can be linked to an Elder Dragon in a way or another (still unsure which to which): Fire to Primordus; Earth to either Primordus, Mordremoth or even Kralkatorrik; Air to Kralkatorrik; Water to “DSD” or Jormag (given that elementalists can summon ice when attuned to water magic). Nothing says though that various aspects of magic.

Konig Des Todes.2086

There are a vast number of differences between elementals and destroyers. For starters, the hive mind. Elementals are controlled, but do not have a telepathic link to the will of the elementalist.

We are comparing one single human elementalist to an Elder Dragon; the amount of magics, and the power of their minds, are on a whole different scale. Firstly, “normal” elementalists can control one or few at a time and there might not be presidence for an hive mind, secondly you say elementalists don’t have a “telepathic link”, but how would the elementals even be controlled if a telepathic mind communication process wasn’t happening (not implying that it’s an active process though, we can’t/don’t really know)?

Konig Des Todes.2086

While the Margonites case does seem irrely similar to dragon corruption (like the Foefire and Rite of the Great Dwarf), the reapers does not. They are souls, simple as that. Their appearance no more unique than the Shock Phantoms and other similar soul-based undead of GW1.

Neither the margonites nor the Reapers seem to be constrained in following their respective god (we’ve seen margonites changing their mind and helping us); and neither do the dwarves seemingly – look at Ogden. Regarding the Reapers I’d argue that Grenth, in order to transform them in its avatars, imbued them with its magic(s).

Regarding Shiro:
I see what you mean there. If anything it’s the Affliction that’s more akin to corruption as we know it: undead beings corrupted by the malevolent spirit of Shiro, characterized by cancerous formations. Ultimately we don’t know the extents of the power of the Envoys; I suggest we keep Shiro out of the equation for now.

Sock.2785:

People’s beliefs can be fallacious: in the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal we learn the Inquest thought they were dealing with chaos magic; Scarlet referred to it as dragon energy; in reality they were dealing with ley lines. In a sense though Scarlet wasn’t that far off: the various aspects of magic, which can and do flow through the ley lines, are a form of sustainment for the Elder Dragons, given that they obtain energy from magic (hence dragon energy). There’s just ley line magic (or the various natural aspects of magic).

False. They were mixing chaos magic with draconic energies (which Scarlet tricked the Inquest into thinking was more chaos magic) while on top of ley lines. Kiel explained this after looking at the results of our expedition if you talked to her during the Fractured release.

There’s also hidden dialogue for higher level Thaumanova fractal runs if you follow the rescued generic Inquest (from the dorms) back to the beginning.

Sock.2785:

If we now equate the salt to Jormag’s magic and the glass of water to an ice elemental, it’s clear that in icebrood elementals magic may be present in different concentration and may act in different ways, but it’s ultimately the same magic used by all other magic users; it just happens that Jormag has access to an immense amount of it (additionally it might know how to use it in unique ways which it had time to learn through the countless millennia).

The problem with your salt analogy is that ice elementals look like normal ice despite having far more magic than standard environmental ice. Similarly, fire elementals and fire djinn look on par to each other, despite the djinns having much more magic in them.

Similarly, Jormag’s ice is treated differently – not just in looks but in function as well to all ice. Same with Kralkatorrik’s crystals and Primordus’ fire and Mordremoth’s plants.

They are fundamentally different on all sides.

Sock.2785:

The only real divine thing we come in contact with is “divine fire”, a spell of unclear origins.

And the magic Kormir absorbed that made her a god. And we know that the gods’ own presence is radiant with “divine energy” that it causes people to go blind.

And divine fire isn’t that unclear. It’s always been attributed to the gods – the very original description is “fire of the gods”.

Sock.2785:

Konig Des Todes.2086

This implies that there are three overarching forms of magic which gets divided into the same or similar “spectrums” – ley line, divine, and draconic – arguably a fourth kind too (Mists)

Couldn’t disagree more on this view. What exists is the various natural aspects of magic (which we see flow through the ley lines in a plasmatic state) which every being in Tyria’s universe (the actual universe) has access to, including humans, charr, Elder Dragons or the human gods (regarding the Mists, a whole thread could be opened on them, but we just don’t know how they function and if there’s a specifical magical aspect (possibly it’s aether) connected to their “protomatter”).

Combine the Magic of the Elder Dragons, Power of the Ley Lines, Energy of the Mists, and a Vision Crystal to create the Cosmic Power.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cosmic_Power

This downright item states that the “Magic of the Elder Dragons” the “Power of the Ley Lines” and the “Energy of the Mists” are different.

And given how the mordrem react to divine fire, that implies – rather heavily – that divine magic is different enough too. Counteracting, potentially, even. Especially when you consider all the other magic tied to the gods and Forgotten have similar effects.

Sock.2785:

Regarding this though, I’d argue that from how Primordus was presented, it somehow “screamed” Fire.

Nothing about his actual body was fiery. It was all stone.

Sock.2785:

Does this erase the fact that those Sons of Svanir ran for their own lives from their corrupted brother? I don’t really understand your caveat here.

Because it shows that what you present as a common case is, in fact, not common.

Sock.2785:

Given the nature of the Bloodstone (why and how the Seers created it), I really doubt it had a sphere of influence associated to it, even when the human gods fragmented it (would you explain the krait obelisks and “other things”?).

Please explain how the Seers created the Bloodstone. Because I am pretty kitten sure there isn’t a single piece of lore on that except “with the Shadowstone” which tells us a grand total of nothing.

And the “why” actually does imply that they could have put in a different sphere of influence (or multiple) than the Elder Dragons’ own since they were putting in all non-consumed/corrupted magic into it. And a magic not matching the Elder Dragons’ spheres would fit that category.

It’s all theoretical still, though.

Sock.2785:

We are comparing one single human elementalist to an Elder Dragon; the amount of magics, and the power of their minds, are on a whole different scale. Firstly, “normal” elementalists can control one or few at a time and there might not be presidence for an hive mind, secondly you say elementalists don’t have a “telepathic link”, but how would the elementals even be controlled if a telepathic mind communication process wasn’t happening (not implying that it’s an active process though, we can’t/don’t really know)?

Firstly, numerical limitations is mechanical. We see NPCs use many more minions and illusions than players can. Isgarren controls countless more elementals than an elementalist PC can. Not a very good argument for lore.

Secondly, even in these greater numbers – such as Joko’s vast undead army – there is no hive mind unlike Zhaitan and his risen or Jormag and his icebrood or anything else. Even two minds conjoined creates a hive or group mind.

As for how to command: spoken orders and gestures or magical inforcement. We see this is the case in GW1 with controlled constructs.

Sock.2785:

Neither the margonites nor the Reapers seem to be constrained in following their respective god (we’ve seen margonites changing their mind and helping us); and neither do the dwarves seemingly – look at Ogden. Regarding the Reapers I’d argue that Grenth, in order to transform them in its avatars, imbued them with its magic(s).

The dwarves are outright stated to be changed in mentality. Even Ogden is, honestly – he’s much more focused on fighting the Elder Dragons. And this is pointblank shown with Jalis in GW1.

There’s no indication that Grenth imbued them with magic, TBH, but even if he did he didn’t change their appearance to be different from any other soul. No indication of “corruption” there.

Sock.2785:

I see what you mean there. If anything it’s the Affliction that’s more akin to corruption as we know it: undead beings corrupted by the malevolent spirit of Shiro, characterized by cancerous formations. Ultimately we don’t know the extents of the power of the Envoys; I suggest we keep Shiro out of the equation for now.

The Afflicted are just undead, ultimately, created using bloated and internally-exploded and mutated/grafted bodies. Little different than your standard necromancer minion, which by far is not corruption either.

I’m not convinced the Afflicted were technically undead, myself. Mechanically they’re shown to die and then get back up as Afflicted, but I think that’s to represent them collapsing as they succumb to the Affliction and then getting back up as Afflicted. There’s no point where they’re actually ‘dead’ in a lore perspective.

Certainly, they don’t have the characteristics of undead (such as holy vulnerability).

Regarding the different types of magic:

I think it is pretty clear that, even if we limit our considerations to the magic of Tyria and ignore the power coming from the wider Mists, that magic has different properties depending on its source. Dragon energy will enslave those who come into contact with too much of it to the will of the dragon – leyline magic and bloodstone magic don’t have this effect, even if it’s otherwise the same type of magic (fire magic, death magic, etc). Leyline magic is a continuous, mixed ‘spectrum’ – the magic from the bloodstones was divided into four schools which were apparently immiscible.

When it comes to the dragon’s domains: I think it’s very possible that there are some forms of magic that the dragons can’t use. We see a precedent for this in the chak: the chak feed off ley line magic, but they have an intolerance to death magic, and thus have Spencer to filter it out. It’s entirely possible that there is also a type of magic (or multiple types) that the dragon’s can’t stomach either – and that might be what the Forgotten exploited to make artifacts that the dragons couldn’t corrupt.

It’s worth noting that there are some forms of magic available to PCs that, as yet, we haven’t seen being associated with a dragon (guardian magic in particular, and the Exalted mention that “the preservation magic of the Forgotten is anathema to Mordremoth”). Now, this could be just that we haven’t seen it yet, but it could also be an indication that there is a form of magic the dragons just can’t use, and which therefore falls outside of the twelve domains of the six dragons.

Slowpokeking.8720:

But there shouldn’t be bodies left after Cataclysm and the 100 years.

Magic

Slowpokeking.8720:

But most of them should be vaporized by the Cataclysm already. Also even if the water is cold, it’s impossible to keep the corpses from decaying for 100 years without special procedure.

Magic again!

We’re not talking about the Tsar Bomba here, but a release of cataclysmic magical energies. We know there was a flash of bright light, everybody nearby was killed, and Orr sank. This does not mean that the actual mechanic was “big explosion that should have vaporised everything organic”. It could have been a combination of killing everybody nearby through some magical means that doesn’t harm the bodies, creating an earthquake that caused Orr to sink, and leaving a lingering field that prevented the bodies from decaying too much (possibly through raising them as undead – we know of undead that were much older than a century that were still walking).

Bottom line, you’re trying to argue that something is impossible when we know very well that it is possible because it obviously happened.

Re:Afflicted: You could actually see people killed by Afflicted, then ~5 seconds later rise up as Afflicted. At the same time, you could save those people from being killed, and they don’t become Afflicted (some few are scripted to die, but only a small amount).

Re:Cataclysm: In fact, the cinematic for Arah story (now part of the PS only) showed the Cataclysm. Bright bluish light shone from the ground high high up, and Orr began sinking in pieces. That’s all. Just the ground lighting up and collapsing – slowly, even, and straight down.

Which would explain why buildings are so in-tact after sinking and rising. Most of the damage we see likely came from the rising part!

Let’s try to look at all of this a from different angle (all of these ideas, not just the ones I’m gonna write now, are a work-in-progress for me; what I’m about to show here might be hard for me to explain, so be willing to follow me).

Let’s start with Kudu: as said by Zojja, he has perverted Snaff’s research and wants to make his own “dragon champions”.
Logically, the next step should be that we take a look at the results of Snaff’s research:

Snaff, A Treatise on the Mental Puppeteering of Golems:

Some scholars theorize that magic flows through all things, that we swim in magic as fish swim in water, or as we ourselves live in air. This magic is said to ebb and flow via currents called ley lines.
Magic infuses everything in the world. The building blocks of reality are held together by magic. With the right connectors, manipulating magical elements with the mind becomes possible.
The mind is a powerful and fragile quantity in the world equation and the Eternal Alchemy. It can move mountains or it can be shattered like glass.
My research has found a thread between magic and the mind. The two are linked. Where there is one, there must also be the other. The igniter is belief.

In Tyria’s actual universe “magic” is generated by the interactions of exotic elemental particles and forces that are fundamentally new and different from our own ones (view this as additional particles and forces into our standard model) and the Mind is somehow also linked to this structure.
We obviously don’t know in extreme detail how that works and it’s hard to order things (as it is in our own world with physics); nonetheless we can try by observation and deduction:
1. The various aspects of magic we see flow through the ley lines are formed by these exotic particles as an atom is formed by fermions (quarks and leptons, or protons and electrons). So, for example, as there’s an atom of gold there’s an atom of fire magic and similarly there will be various isotopes (a theoretical example: if fire magic is the “basic” atom, lava magic will be an isotope of said atom; ultimately they’re treated equally and respond to the same category).
2. The ley lines themselves act more like a force carrier, particles that give rise to forces between other particles; they make said aspects of magic (1) flow constrained for example. Similar forces make the magical atoms (1) come to be in the first place (similarly to the strong interaction).
3. The Mind is naturally linked to “magic”, it has some magical features itself, something that connects it to “magic” to a fundamental level; it’s hard for me to make a clear correspondence right now though.
However, we know too much magic can make one go insane, somehow breaking the equilibrium between these particles. Elder Dragons and the human gods (for example) have dammed this “obstacle”, but in two different ways: the formers are enslaved by magic, they live off of magic and are dependent; the seconds enslaved magic, they are not driven by it. With this knowledge (hoping I explained myself) we can understand chaos, dark and light energies:

• Chaos energy is deteriorating for the mind, it makes the magic user lose control of himself, not commanded by anyone/anything in particular really; an extreme case would be the unbound Anomalies. It appears as a combination of both dark energy and light energy: purplish blue.
• Dark energy makes one dependent to magic, and it’s also used by Elder Dragons (for example) to change other’s minds, imposing their will on them. It appears as fuchsia/pink; this colour is present in various regards of most Elder Dragons we’ve interacted so far: Mordremoth, Kralkatorrik, Jormag and Zhaitan; also Kudu is surrounded by it.
• Light energy corresponds to the ascension of the mind, a complete control over magic. With this, the human gods are able to “gift” their magic (the magics in point 1) without subduing other’s minds. It appears as blue/light blue, for example: “divine fire” or even the “Blue Orb”.

— CONTINUES —

So, the Magic of the Elder Dragons, again, is the same magic we all use (1); the Power of the Ley Lines are the various natural forces (force carrying particles) that dictate how “magic” interacts with everything (2); the Energy of the Mists is honestly a mystery right now (we don’t really know that much) and I’m not able to go into deep examination yet but ultimately it falls under the universe’s forces and particles, it’s just composed of even more exotic ones.

After all of this, one could argue: “But Zojja said that Kudu created dragon champions!”.
When regarding the process of imbuing someone with magic (1), the only real example tyrians (in GW2) came in contact with was when the Elder Dragons do so; it follows that when Kudu controlled those “abominations” they were referred to as “dragon minions”. However, Kudu controls those abominations without the need of installing a magitech device on their chests, like the Inquest does in Arah (regarding Kudu’s Monster, I personally doubt it is under his total control: firstly, it is “imprisoned”, secondly it is imbued with a lot of magic, four different aspects too, so chaos energy (as shown in point 3) might start to have a role here).

Once again, one could argue: “But Kudu himself said he invested the power of the dragons into these creatures!”. Let’s look at this quote from an Inquest subordinate:

Storage Room Clerk: The Crucible of Eternity removes and concentrates dragon energies at the bottom of the complex.

Ultimately the whole deal isn’t clear even to Kudu, but what the reactor does is that it scatters the ley line flow, isolating the six main aspects of magic. These can then be artificially concentrated into various subjects via magitech. To clarify, we know the “coloured magics” flowing through the ley lines are the natural aspects of magic we all use and that the Crucible make use of these magics; it follows that there’s no such thing as “dragon magic”, there’s just “magic”.

P.S. I really think that when designing magic they drew inspiration from the natural world, hence modern physics. I’d really like to know the opinions of everyone on this.

@Konig: To help me understand your view, how do you exactly interpret a “sphere of influence”?

draxynnic.3719:

Magic
Magic again!

We’re not talking about the Tsar Bomba here, but a release of cataclysmic magical energies. We know there was a flash of bright light, everybody nearby was killed, and Orr sank. This does not mean that the actual mechanic was “big explosion that should have vaporised everything organic”. It could have been a combination of killing everybody nearby through some magical means that doesn’t harm the bodies, creating an earthquake that caused Orr to sink, and leaving a lingering field that prevented the bodies from decaying too much (possibly through raising them as undead – we know of undead that were much older than a century that were still walking).

Bottom line, you’re trying to argue that something is impossible when we know very well that it is possible because it obviously happened.

It was made clear, big fire explosion, which means they couldn’t have survived. Even the Foefire did vaporize everyone, just kitten ed their soul.

He stole it from Arah, taking it to his tower, and there, unleashed its might upon the land. With a flash of light and explosion of flame the nation of Orr crumbled and was lost into the depths of the sea.

Sock.2785:

Let’s start with Kudu: as said by Zojja, he has perverted Snaff’s research and wants to make his own “dragon champions”.
Logically, the next step should be that we take a look at the results of Snaff’s research:

Snaff, A Treatise on the Mental Puppeteering of Golems:

This is your first error. The research Zojja talks about is Snaff’s research on dragon magic, not his research on mentally controlled Golemancy.

Sock.2785:

the Mind is somehow also linked to this structure.

In theory it is.

Nothing actually says Snaff was right. After all, Snaff never went to a place without magic, so how could he truly know that “where one is the other must be” – why can’t there be places with mind but not magic? In fact, this very much sounds like the state of Tyria when the Elder Dragons have finished consuming magic, or even the human homeworld which has been stated to be with so little to no magic that humanity attributed the “discovery of magic” as the “creation of magic by the gods”.

Sock.2785:

However, we know too much magic can make one go insane, somehow breaking the equilibrium between these particles. Elder Dragons and the human gods (for example) have dammed this “obstacle”, but in two different ways: the formers are enslaved by magic, they live off of magic and are dependent; the seconds enslaved magic, they are not driven by it.

Where do you get that “too much magic makes one go insane”? The Six Gods don’t seem all that insane and they’re magical powerhouses.

Nothing really indicates that the Elder Dragons are insane either – god complex, sure, but that’s not insanity.

So I would say that no, we do not know this. And, in fact, I don’t think there’s anything that can be explicitly tied to implying this.

Sock.2785:

Chaos energy is deteriorating for the mind, it makes the magic user lose control of himself, not commanded by anyone/anything in particular really; an extreme case would be the unbound Anomalies. It appears as a combination of both dark energy and light energy: purplish blue.

Mesmers use chaos magic. Their minds do not deteriorate. Nor do assassins/thieves.

Sock.2785:

Dark energy makes one dependent to magic, and it’s also used by Elder Dragons (for example) to change other’s minds, imposing their will on them. It appears as fuchsia/pink; this colour is present in various regards of most Elder Dragons we’ve interacted so far: Mordremoth, Kralkatorrik, Jormag and Zhaitan; also Kudu is surrounded by it.

Necromancers use dark energy. They are not dependent on magic.

I would argue that if any Elder Dragon uses dark energy, it is only Zhaitan. However, I would actually argue that no Elder Dragon uses dark energy, as the energy they use is always described as draconic energy and, most importantly, is often mistaken for chaos energy not dark energy.

Furthermore, dark energy does not show itself as fuchsia or pink. The one time we see it used in GW2, we see it as ultraviolet. And when we see what could be it in GW1, it is basically shadow. In other words, “dark energy” is visually equivalent to “blacklight” – which appears closer to purple at the brightest.

It is, in fact, chaos magic that seems to appear as pink/fuchsia.

Sock.2785:

Light energy corresponds to the ascension of the mind, a complete control over magic. With this, the human gods are able to “gift” their magic (the magics in point 1) without subduing other’s minds. It appears as blue/light blue, for example: “divine fire” or even the “Blue Orb”.

Actually, the one time we see light energy used in GW1, it is in the Prime Hologram at the end of GW1, which was white – not blue.

As an aside, divine fire is white/gold, and has no color relation to the Blue Orb (or to blue/light blue). It seems you’re trying to go into two different directions.

Furthermore, there seems to be a distinct difference to me between light energy and divine magic. Divine magic has been tied solely to the gods and Forgotten, but light energy/magic is tied to the professions of faith – so there does seem to be similarity in the grounds. But where light magic can be consumed by Elder Dragons, divine magic (or rather, all magic tied to the Six/Forgotten) has had no instances yet of such (utilized by, yes, but not corrupted/consumed by).

Namely, the sources I’d tie to divine magic would be: Divine Fire, Foefire, the Forgotten’s ritual on Glint, the Exalting Rituals. All of these instances are tied to the Forgotten or Six Gods and have proven to be resistant to dragon corruption.

Sock.2785:

So, the Magic of the Elder Dragons, again, is the same magic we all use (1);

This claim sounds like you’re saying gold is the same as iron, based on your original point that all magic is made of atoms.

Or in other words – something I agree with – that “the core building blocks between magic we use and magic of the Elder Dragons are the same/similar”. I would say that is true, but the actual form – the current state of being – for the two are different.

Something you’ve not covered is this question:

• If dragon magic is the same as everyday magic, why do people constantly differentiate the two?
• And, furthermore, why does the mixing of dragon energy with chaos energy (an everyday magic) result in cataclysmic explosion while the mixing of light, dark, and chaos energy (everyday magic), as seen with the Prime Hologram/College Holograms/Ultraviolet Hologram fights, does not?

Sock.2785:

When regarding the process of imbuing someone with magic (1), the only real example tyrians (in GW2) came in contact with was when the Elder Dragons do so; it follows that when Kudu controlled those “abominations” they were referred to as “dragon minions”. However, Kudu controls those abominations without the need of installing a magitech device on their chests, like the Inquest does in Arah (regarding Kudu’s Monster, I personally doubt it is under his total control: firstly, it is “imprisoned”, secondly it is imbued with a lot of magic, four different aspects too, so chaos energy (as shown in point 3) might start to have a role here).

• I do not think that Tyrians would so quickly forget about Margonites, so your first point about them being the “only example” would be false. Furthermore: Flame Legion Shamans do exactly the same, yet are never attributed to dragon energy.
• Technically speaking, Kudu never controlled Subject Alpha and Kudu’s Monster only became free after Kudu’s death so we cannot – as you say – be certain that Kudu controlled such.

As such, there is no true indication that he used “something mistaken for dragon energy”. Especially when he’s siphoning corrupting magic from dragon minions.

Sock.2785:

Once again, one could argue: “But Kudu himself said he invested the power of the dragons into these creatures!”. Let’s look at this quote from an Inquest subordinate:

Storage Room Clerk: The Crucible of Eternity removes and concentrates dragon energies at the bottom of the complex.

Ultimately the whole deal isn’t clear even to Kudu, but what the reactor does is that it scatters the ley line flow, isolating the six main aspects of magic. These can then be artificially concentrated into various subjects via magitech. To clarify, we know the “coloured magics” flowing through the ley lines are the natural aspects of magic we all use and that the Crucible make use of these magics; it follows that there’s no such thing as “dragon magic”, there’s just “magic”.

You say a lot without saying much at all here. I’m not even sure what your point in counter-arguing that “argument” that was specifically designed to be countered is.

Here’s one major issue you overlooked: Kudu creates normal dragon minions too. Mechanically these created dragon minions are 100% the same as natural dragon minions; aesthetically they are too.

He also has actual dragon minions in captivity (what he’s “removes” dragon energies from) which means he’s not taking the magic from the ley line flow at all. So that point of your counter-argument is false.

Sock.2785:

@Konig: To help me understand your view, how do you exactly interpret a “sphere of influence”?

Hard to say since we have so little knowledge on the subject.

From what we know, we can say that all magic comes from the same core elements (your “atoms” if you will) which is called aether (unless they decide to retcon that interview answer too, that is – let’s presume, for sake of argument, that they are done with retcons though). But trying to say “the gods’ magic is the same as our magic is the same as dragon magic” is a bit iffy to say the least. It’s like saying “tarnishable metals” and “rusting metals” are the same thing. Yes, they’re both metals, but their density, composition, look – everything about them is different, except what makes them both “metals”. Similarly, I would say the same for divine, ley, and draconic energies – they are all magic, but everything except what makes them magic differ.

When we talk of spheres of influence, specifically, we’re talking about the magical fields of the Elder Dragons. We know now that they are not limited to these two-each fields, as shown by Primordus. But the term, to me, should be used solely in relation to the Elder Dragons and draconic energy. Otherwise it would be akin to tying Dwayna’s domain of Life to the spheres of influence of the Elder Dragons – nothing says that will work.

The spheres of influence are also confusing – if Taimi is right and the Elder Dragons’ consumption is akin to the chak organ filtering out “harmful” magic, how can Primordus now consume what should then be harmful? Furthermore, if it’s not harmful, and consuming multiple types of magic only make the minions stronger, why do they divide the magic at all? Why doesn’t each Elder Dragon try to become some sort of prismatic dragon?

My theory is that we have three groups of magic which each are divided into their own smaller groups – supercategories and subcategories if you will. The supercategories are as mentioned: divine, ley, and draconic. The subcategories change per and we do not have a clear definition of them.

Ley energy and draconic energy have both shown to be unmixable (Thaumanova) but also co-existent (the energies going into the ley lines when Elder Dragons die or hibernate). So it’s hard to say what the exact reaction is meant to be – there’s no real consistency here. But all evidence of actual or potential divine energy has shown to be immune to mixing with draconic energy (like the typical view of water and oil).

I’ll try to depict my thoughts on the “spectrum” of magic later via image.

Slowpokeking.8720:

draxynnic.3719:

Magic
Magic again!

We’re not talking about the Tsar Bomba here, but a release of cataclysmic magical energies. We know there was a flash of bright light, everybody nearby was killed, and Orr sank. This does not mean that the actual mechanic was “big explosion that should have vaporised everything organic”. It could have been a combination of killing everybody nearby through some magical means that doesn’t harm the bodies, creating an earthquake that caused Orr to sink, and leaving a lingering field that prevented the bodies from decaying too much (possibly through raising them as undead – we know of undead that were much older than a century that were still walking).

Bottom line, you’re trying to argue that something is impossible when we know very well that it is possible because it obviously happened.

It was made clear, big fire explosion, which means they couldn’t have survived. Even the Foefire did vaporize everyone, just kitten ed their soul.

He stole it from Arah, taking it to his tower, and there, unleashed its might upon the land. With a flash of light and explosion of flame the nation of Orr crumbled and was lost into the depths of the sea.

You’re still trying to argue for the impossibility of something that we know very well must be possible because it happened.

However it appeared to observers, it was an explosion of magic. An explosion of magic could end up doing very different things to just vaporising everything organic at ground zero.

Like, say, preserving it, or animating it as undead.

Konig Des Todes.2086

This is your first error. The research Zojja talks about is Snaff’s research on dragon magic, not his research on mentally controlled Golemancy.

The title of that treatise is misleading, since it deals with Snaff’s research regardless; if you’d actually consider both the title and that extract (I suppose it’s an extract), it clearly talks about magic and mind in general, and has to do with Snaff’s whole (magi)scientific work.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Nothing actually says Snaff was right. After all, Snaff never went to a place without magic

Unless Snaff could travel between universes, that’s just how Tyria’s universe work. You can’t take magic out of the universal equation. Snaff could be comparable to Einstein, with the difference that the asura’s theories haven’t been verified and accepted yet, hence they never reached common knowledge.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Where do you get that “too much magic makes one go insane”? The Six Gods don’t seem all that insane and they’re magical powerhouses.
Nothing really indicates that the Elder Dragons are insane either – god complex, sure, but that’s not insanity.

It’s stated and implied numerous times. We have indications with Matthias and with everyone affected by the bloodstone’s explosion (or continued exposure to its crystalline fragments, especially when implanted in the body); even the PC was doomed to lose control had the Priory not intervened; the Shadowstone absorbed the excess magic that was slowly making us lose control.

I thought I made it quite clear that Elder Dragons and human gods aren’t insane: by using (knowingly or not) two opposite “elemental forces” (as shown in point 3) they were able not to go insane; however the Dragons are now dependent to magic while, in contrast, the human gods aren’t (in a sense, we could say that magic is dependent to them). The key here is Ascension; I doubt the Elder Dragons are Ascended, but human gods definitely are.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Mesmers use chaos magic. Their minds do not deteriorate. Nor do assassins/thieves.
Necromancers use dark energy. They are not dependent on magic.
[Light energy]

In this interpretaion I took inspiration from various energies, as encountered here (chaos, dark and light), to try and describe fundamental forces (force carrying particles) connecting the mind to magic (which was the main point to actually focus about). The sharing of the name happpened to be a coincidence.
So, here, dark energy isn’t the “dark arts” applied by necromancers; chaos energy isn’t chaos magic (which would be a kind of magic as shown in point 1); light energy isn’t in on itself the combination of every “colour” of magics (1). How they appear was just a naive addition I tried to propose, intended originally as a parenthesis. not intended to be the main point.
However, regarding light energy’s appearance (I went by memory) I was recalling the boon icons and the various auras of the Forgotten’s “floating weapons”.

Konig Des Todes.2086

As an aside, divine fire is white/gold […] Furthermore, there seems to be a distinct difference to me between light energy and divine magic.

“Divine fire”, or “divine magic” in general, seems to be the presence of all the aspects of magic (as show in point 1) and the aura surrounding the PC when killing the Shadow of the Dragon is a clear example of this. In my view, light energy (again, separate in this view from “light magic”) explains how a being (a mind) can do that; it’s the equivalent of a fundamental force.

Konig Des Todes.2086

[…] we see [dark magic] as ultraviolet. […] In other words, “dark energy” is visually equivalent to “blacklight” – which appears closer to purple at the brightest.

Regarding dark energy’s appearance: we can’t perceive ultraviolet as a colour, so we can’t see it; the violet colour we perceive from the blacklight isn’t ultraviolet but still visible light.
Regardless, this colour can be seen in some of Jormag’s icy formations, within some Zhaitan’s minions, Mordremoth’s “pink magic” is really just that; Kralkatorrik’s kinda tricky, since it is associated with fuchsia/purple (its same “sphere” appeared as fuchsia in that vision).

—CONTINUES—

Konig Des Todes.2086

This claim sounds like you’re saying gold is the same as iron, based on your original point that all magic is made of atoms.

I don’t understand what the specific claim you’re referring to is, and how you get to that interpretation; would you point to where you think I said that “all magic is made of atoms”? Which (atoms), by the way, are not elemental particles on themselves. Also, when comparing these exotic particles to atoms I didn’t imply them to work exactly like atoms (it’s difficult, at least for me, to imagine and describe a whole new elemental particle and/or forces from scratch).

Konig Des Todes.2086

If dragon magic is the same as everyday magic, why do people constantly differentiate the two?

When approaching this, I think your assumption still is that “dragon magic is corruption”. I’ll just quote this from the wiki: " “Magic” is often used interchangeably with “dragon energy”, although whether the two are truly the same is ambiguous. ".

Konig Des Todes.2086

And, furthermore, why does the mixing of dragon energy with chaos energy (an everyday magic) result in cataclysmic explosion

The Thaumanova Reactor drew energy (magical energy) directly from the ley lines deep down (exactly like the Crucible of Eternity), seemingly from an interception of ley lines (or a hub); not knowing what they were doing, the Inquest thought they were dealing with chaos magic (they were not). When the reactor started to collapse, and the Anomaly was finally killed, the high concentrations of magics generated quite a lot of chaos energy (as in my viewpoint (3)).

Konig Des Todes.2086

while the mixing of light, dark, and chaos energy (everyday magic), as seen with the Prime Hologram/College Holograms/Ultraviolet Hologram fights, does not?

Uhm… those are holograms: holograms are projected three-dimensional images of objects or creatures. We don’t know anything about eventual magical properties of the holograms.

Konig Des Todes.2086

I do not think that Tyrians would so quickly forget about Margonites, so your first point about them being the “only example” would be false. Furthermore: Flame Legion Shamans do exactly the same, yet are never attributed to dragon energy.

There are hardly any tyrians still alive from those times (roughly 250 years) and, if anything, some elonian citizens might remember them more, but even between them there’s nobody who directly came in contact with them. There never was a chance to make an actual, true comparison for any tyrian.
Why would the Flame Legion Shamans be attributed to dragons? They don’t go around screaming: “Surrender to the fire dragon!”.

—CONTINUES—

Konig Des Todes.2086

Here’s one major issue you overlooked: Kudu creates normal dragon minions too. Mechanically these created dragon minions are 100% the same as natural dragon minions; aesthetically they are too.

Not even one of Kudu’s abominations attacks in the name of the dragon.

Konig Des Todes.2086

[…] there is no true indication that he used “something mistaken for dragon energy”. Especially when he’s siphoning corrupting magic from dragon minions. […] He also has actual dragon minions in captivity (what he’s “removes” dragon energies from) which means he’s not taking the magic from the ley line flow at all. So that point of your counter-argument is false.

The proper captured dragons minions are there to be studied and analyzed. The assertion of the Storage Room Clerk (the one I quoted) makes it really clear that the process of taking these magics takes place at the very bottom of the complex; it removes these energies from deep down. It seems pretty logical that, being deep down, and major ley lines flow deep down, the various aspects of magic (point 1) were removed from the ley lines (point 2). In addition, the Infinite Coil Reactor was built as a replacement for the Thaumanova Reactor, and we know the Thaumanova Reactor was draining magical energies from the ley lines; but the Inquest learned from their mistakes, and now knows that what they were dealing with were in reality “currents of magic”, also known as ley lines (and Kudu learned this from Snaff’s research).
By your interpretation (and you seem to take it for granted without any proof), the Inquest should bring proper dragon minions deep down in the complex to extract their “dragon magics”, a relative slow and limited process.
My viewpoint (about the Inquest’s reactor separating the magics (1) from the ley lines (2)) actually makes sense and is less dependent to proper dragon minions getting captured, which, by the way, are captured just to be analyzed. To further validate this, the Inquest didn’t capture actual mordrem and Subject Alpha is still able to use that kind of magic (the natural aspect of magic).

Konig Des Todes.2086

You say a lot without saying much at all here. I’m not even sure what your point in counter-arguing that “argument” that was specifically designed to be countered is.

Esier explanation: “dragon magics” do not flow through ley lines, the natural magical aspects (1) do. In fact “dragon magics” aren’t even a thing in my viewpoint.

Sock.2785:

The title of that treatise is misleading, since it deals with Snaff’s research regardless; if you’d actually consider both the title and that extract (I suppose it’s an extract), it clearly talks about magic and mind in general, and has to do with Snaff’s whole (magi)scientific work.

You missed the point. Zojja was talking about Snaff’s dragon energy research and that treatise has no dragon energy research mentioned.

Sock.2785:

You can’t take magic out of the universal equation.

Actually you can and must. Official lore states that the world is in a state of nearly no magic when the Elder Dragons go to sleep. And it also states that the human homeworld was with little to no magic (thus being why they thought the Six “made the gift of magic”).

This proves that worlds – and civilizations – can live and potentially thrive with little to no magic, meaning that where mind is doesn’t necessarily mean magic must be too.

Which means that, to some degree, Snaff’s treatise is wrong.

Sock.2785:

It’s stated and implied numerous times. We have indications with Matthias and with everyone affected by the bloodstone’s explosion (or continued exposure to its crystalline fragments, especially when implanted in the body); even the PC was doomed to lose control had the Priory not intervened; the Shadowstone absorbed the excess magic that was slowly making us lose control.

First off, your only confirmed cases of magic causing insanity is magic held within Bloodstones. And one very specific Bloodstone at that (ghosts haven’t yet been reported to have returned to the Ring of Fire Bloodstone – instead, they left that Bloodstone to return to the Maguuma Bloodstone) implying that it is something unique to that specific Bloodstone.

Nothing actually says the PC would lose their mind if it had not been for the Shadowstone – in fact, the Shadowstone had done something that allows them to “turn into” an anomaly themselves. That’s hardly a problem solved. Any insanity inflicted by the PC would no doubt be a result of seeing things that others cannot – while such was caused by magic, it would not inevitably lead to insanity. There are some people who manage to cope with mental disorders that causes them to see and interact with hallucinations. One famous individual being John Nash..

Unless you’re going to argue that all mental disorders (or at least hallucination related ones) are causes of insanity (which I guess depends on the definition of insanity you go towards).

Furthermore, seeing the anomalies is drastically different from how the Maguuma Bloodstone affected individuals – the latter caused an addiction dependency, which is hardly insanity in of itself. Comparing the two and saying they are the same is akin to saying paranoid schizophrenia is the same as being addicted to heroine (this is, in fact, a very apt comparison of what the two cases are).

Sock.2785:

The key here is Ascension; I doubt the Elder Dragons are Ascended, but human gods definitely are.

Nothing says the gods are Ascended. Kormir, for example, never Ascended.

Sock.2785:

In this interpretaion I took inspiration from various energies, as encountered here (chaos, dark and light), to try and describe fundamental forces (force carrying particles) connecting the mind to magic (which was the main point to actually focus about). The sharing of the name happpened to be a coincidence.
So, here, dark energy isn’t the “dark arts” applied by necromancers; chaos energy isn’t chaos magic (which would be a kind of magic as shown in point 1); light energy isn’t in on itself the combination of every “colour” of magics (1). How they appear was just a naive addition I tried to propose, intended originally as a parenthesis. not intended to be the main point.
However, regarding light energy’s appearance (I went by memory) I was recalling the boon icons and the various auras of the Forgotten’s “floating weapons”.

That wiki deduction, in regards to light and dark energy, comes from two sources and only two sources.

The first being the Prime Hologram fight. Which is the sole mention of light and dark energy in all of GW2.

The second being GW1 energy damage types. In which monks largely used holy and necromancers largely used dark.

I never implied or stated that “dark energy” is equivilant to “dark arts”.

As an aside: Chaos energy IS chaos magic. When talking about magic, “magic” and “energy” are interchangable when describing a type of magical energy. Chaos magic = chaos energy; dragon magic = draconic energy. They are terms used interchangably.

The Forgotten’s “floating weapons” are just using the chaos weapon model, which probably shouldn’t be a strong source for anything given that the chaos weapons in GW1 were basically just spectral weapons.

Sock.2785:

“Divine fire”, or “divine magic” in general, seems to be the presence of all the aspects of magic (as show in point 1) and the aura surrounding the PC when killing the Shadow of the Dragon is a clear example of this. In my view, light energy (again, separate in this view from “light magic”) explains how a being (a mind) can do that; it’s the equivalent of a fundamental force.

The “presence of all the aspects of magic” is ley lines – this is what Taimi explicitly says in S3E2. And ley lines are prismatic in appearance, with a heavy hue or blue (largely being blue with purple, green, red, and yellow outlines). An sometimes, rarely, they’re yellow with red/purple outline.

Divine fire – or any divine magic – has no appearance relation to ley lines and is always white with golden outline (even the aura around the PC when killing the Shadow of the Dragon or Mordremoth’s avatar).

And again, light energy = light magic in everyone (but your’s) terminology.

Sock.2785:

Regarding dark energy’s appearance: we can’t perceive ultraviolet as a colour, so we can’t see it; the violet colour we perceive from the blacklight isn’t ultraviolet but still visible light.

My point was that the Ultraviolet Hologram is the singular proven evidence of dark energy being used in GW2.

When we’re shown some kind of depiction of ultraviolet, it’s depicted with purple since that’s the closest the human eye can see of it.

Sock.2785:

Regardless, this colour can be seen in some of Jormag’s icy formations, within some Zhaitan’s minions, Mordremoth’s “pink magic” is really just that; Kralkatorrik’s kinda tricky, since it is associated with fuchsia/purple (its same “sphere” appeared as fuchsia in that vision).

In 2010 or 2011, Jeff Grubb was asked if there was any relation between Abaddon and Kralkatorrik because of the shared color of purple. His response:

“Purple is the color of evil in Tyria.”

Basically, the purple hues’ only meaning is that it’s malevolent.

Also, where does Mordremoth have “pink” magic? All aura hues with Mordremoth and Mordrem are either lime green or dark purple.

Sock.2785:

I don’t understand what the specific claim you’re referring to is, and how you get to that interpretation; would you point to where you think I said that “all magic is made of atoms”? Which (atoms), by the way, are not elemental particles on themselves. Also, when comparing these exotic particles to atoms I didn’t imply them to work exactly like atoms (it’s difficult, at least for me, to imagine and describe a whole new elemental particle and/or forces from scratch).

Point 1, you say all magic is formed of atoms. You use this to argue that dragon magic is the magic we use.

To me, that sounds like saying because gold is made of atoms, and iron is made of similar atoms, they must be the same thing.

Sock.2785:

When approaching this, I think your assumption still is that “dragon magic is corruption”. I’ll just quote this from the wiki: " “Magic” is often used interchangeably with “dragon energy”, although whether the two are truly the same is ambiguous. ".

And the wiki would be false there. There is literally one time ever in the entire course of the game that “magic” and “draconic energy” are used interchangably. And that is when Scarlet tricked the Inquest into mixing chaos energy with draconic energy. So it’s not even “magic in general” but “chaos magic” is used interchangably… one time… with intention of falsification.

In other words: she lied.

And I’m not surprised as to who wrote that to be honest. He made a lot of similar errors and putting speculations as fact.

I’ve gone and removed it from the wiki, given the lack of basis.

Sock.2785:

The Thaumanova Reactor drew energy (magical energy) directly from the ley lines deep down (exactly like the Crucible of Eternity), seemingly from an interception of ley lines (or a hub); not knowing what they were doing, the Inquest thought they were dealing with chaos magic (they were not). When the reactor started to collapse, and the Anomaly was finally killed, the high concentrations of magics generated quite a lot of chaos energy (as in my viewpoint (3)).

I do not believe anything says that either reactor drew power from the ley lines. Especially since with exception of the fractal the knowledge or even mention of ley lines didn’t exist in the game when they were put into the game. And even then, the only mention of ley lines in the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal is that the reactor failing let Scarlet identify the local ley line network.

If you’re getting that from the wiki… Well, the wiki is too often edited by players who like to put in their speculation as fact. It happens far too much. Which is my guess since nothing actually says the Thaumanova Anomaly existed in Tyria (while we are seeing anomalies now, they have a vastly different situation to their appearance than the Thaumanova meltdown).

And yes, the Inquest were dealing with chaos magic. Kiel’s findings as well as Marjory’s and even the Inquest mention this – however, all three mention that they also added in draconic energy to the mix (due to Scarlet’s prodding).

Sock.2785:

Uhm… those are holograms: holograms are projected three-dimensional images of objects or creatures. We don’t know anything about eventual magical properties of the holograms.

PC: A hologram?
Elli: A magical construction of light emitted by this device on my belt. It projects my voice and mimics everything I do.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trouble_at_the_Roots#Guardian.27s_Pass

Scarlet Briar: Enough, enough, enough. No light energy. No more reloading. No spent cases. NO distractions. Fire everything so I can get back to work!
Scarlet Briar: The dark energy is all I need. Now it’s time to die, die, die.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_Scarlet's_Prime_Hologram_before_the_defenses_activate

TL;DR These Holograms, originally made by Elli, sold to LA, and stolen by Aetherblades then reconfigured by Scarlet, are powered by magic. In the Prime Hologram (and related) case, powered by light energy and dark energy.

Sock.2785:

There are hardly any tyrians still alive from those times (roughly 250 years) and, if anything, some elonian citizens might remember them more, but even between them there’s nobody who directly came in contact with them. There never was a chance to make an actual, true comparison for any tyrian.
Why would the Flame Legion Shamans be attributed to dragons? They don’t go around screaming: “Surrender to the fire dragon!”.

You speak of Tyrians as if they don’t have a giant multi-racial order who’s primary existence is to record and discover the accurate history of the world, which was founded in the years where Margonites – the subject matter in question of being known or not – were widespread. You also speak as if hundreds of Elonians did not spread to Tyria as refugees. You also speak as if there isn’t a huge multi-racial order that originated in Elona and had personally fought Margonites and have no reason to not ensure knowledge of that battle is forgotten.

In short: there is absolutely no reason why Margonites wouldn’t be common knowledge, at least among humans. Norn, sylvari, and charr likely wouldn’t care, but if they joined the Priory or Whispers they’d know. And the individual Tyrians we’re talking about are part of the Orders/Pact, so including members of the Priory and Whispers.

Re: Flame Legion: your argument was that Kudu’s experiments are attributed to the Elder Dragons solely because no one else in Tyrian history has altered individuals on such scale, and that he is in fact not using dragon corruption but ley line’s same spheres as the dragons. I showed that the Flame Legion have. They are not tied to the Elder Dragons.

The two cases existing are contradicting to your reasoning.

Sock.2785:

Not even one of Kudu’s abominations attacks in the name of the dragon.

Pretty sure the common risen do. But to further that: no destroyer in Tyria attacks in the name of the dragon; no icebrood in Tyria do either except for champions; no branded in Tyria do either except for one champion out of ~5 or so known; no mordrem in Tyria do either except for Mordrem Guard.

So to say the insane Subject Alpha, Kudu’s Monster, or the three Evolved dragon minions (aka the experimented on dragon minions – not just analyzed, experimented on) who don’t speak at all do not praise their dragon(s), and therefore are not corrupted by dragon energies, is a very bad argument.

Sock.2785:

The proper captured dragons minions are there to be studied and analyzed.

And have their energies pulled from so they can be concentrated and put into the subjects…

And let’s not forget being experimented on – the very origin of the three sub-bosses of CoE explorable.

Sock.2785:

It seems pretty logical that, being deep down, and major ley lines flow deep down, the various aspects of magic (point 1) were removed from the ley lines (point 2).

You are making the assumption that a ley line runs under the Infinite Coil Reactor! You make the assumption that they knew what ley lines were.

And it’s impossible for the Inquest – or Kudu – to pull corrupting dragon energy from the ley lines when they don’t know that ley lines exist. Not even Snaff had definitive proof of them – as Taimi explicitly points out near the end of Season 1, ley lines was just a theory of some asura (specifically of synergetic college). No one but Scarlet knew about ley lines being real until the Battle for Lion’s Arch in 1327 AE. And even Scarlet only knew in ~1324, and only because of her observations of the Thaumanova Reactor blowing up (and to our knowledge, only Scarlet escaped the reactor room – the Inquest there in the fractal only survived because of us, but we weren’t there for the real thing).

Sock.2785:

My viewpoint (about the Inquest’s reactor separating the magics (1) from the ley lines (2)) actually makes sense and is less dependent to proper dragon minions getting captured, which, by the way, are captured just to be analyzed. To further validate this, the Inquest didn’t capture actual mordrem and Subject Alpha is still able to use that kind of magic (the natural aspect of magic).

Makes sense until you realize they didn’t know about the existence of ley lines.

Why would they “just analyze” the minions when they have a steady supply of them? And how can you properly experiment with the dragon energies if you’re not pulling them from the source?

And they did capture mordrem, technically – just “purified mordrem” in a way. It’d be little different than capturing the Zephyrite crystals and testing that magic. Of course, this is why the CoE creatures are not true mordrem. If it were what you said, and they captured the dragon’s magic from the ley lines, and were able to perfectly mimic destroyer, icebrood, branded, and risen – why couldn’t they perfectly mimic mordrem? Why, instead, did they perfectly mimic Nightmare-influenced purified mordrem, the same kind of mordrem that they obtained to, as you say, only analyze?

You say your reasoning makes sense… but it doesn’t.

Sock.2785:

Esier explanation: “dragon magics” do not flow through ley lines, the natural magical aspects (1) do. In fact “dragon magics” aren’t even a thing in my viewpoint.

That’s saying “canon lore isn’t canon lore”.

You’re literally arguing that practically everything we’ve known about magic and dragon corruption’s nature is false.

Konig Des Todes.2086

That’s saying “canon lore isn’t canon lore”.
You’re literally arguing that practically everything we’ve known about magic and dragon corruption’s nature is false.

Most of what we know about magic and “dragon corruption” comes from our own deductions; it follows that it can be false. My view is as viable as any other view when lacking a definitive explanation.
I’m trying to explain how the Dragons were naturally driven to control others’ minds and that the whole corruptive process isn’t their prerogative; I’m saying that “dragon energies” are not specific and unique “dragon magics” nor are generated by the Dragons, but are natural things (the whole particles/forces thing) indipendent to them.
The fire magic used by Primordus is not different from that used by any other magic user; the difference is that Primordus has access to an immense amount and that its mind is powerful, able to bend others’ mind to its own will.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Zojja was talking about Snaff’s dragon energy research

It may not be the exact same research but the knowledge we get when reading that extract from Snaff is that: magic (1) is everywhere; magic (1) tends to ebb and flow into these magical currents, or ley lines (2); mind and magic are linked; it’s possible to manipulate magical elements with the mind (through magitech if one’s mind is not powerful enough or when referring to golemancy).
Manipulating magical elements with the mind is what the Elder Dragons do (and it’s what I’m trying to evidentiate from the beginning: “physical” and “mental” corruption). Each Elder Dragon goes through this mental process, regardless of their “sphere of influence” (what kind of magic they imbue their victims with).
Kudu perverted his old master’s research to make his own dragon champions.
When Logan says: “[Kudu]’s been corrupted by the dragon energies”, Zojja just responds: “it is an improvement”; Kudu is not under any Dragon’s influence even though he’s using these “dragon energies”.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Actually you can and must [take magic out of the universal equation]. Official lore states that the world is in a state of nearly no magic when the Elder Dragons go to sleep.

Magic is and will always be in Tyria’s universe, it does not get destroyed when the Elder Dragons absorb it; you can’t take it out of Tyria’s universe because it’s a fundamental part of said universe. The laws of (magi)physics remain the same even with low levels of magic in the world: the link between the mind and magic is something deeper and more fundamental. To visualize, imagine them to be almost like electricity and magnetism: two faces of the same coin (don’t take this too literally, it’s just a way to show their connection).

Konig Des Todes.2086

your only confirmed cases of magic causing insanity is magic held within Bloodstones. And one very specific Bloodstone at that (ghosts haven’t yet been reported to have returned to the Ring of Fire Bloodstone – instead, they left that Bloodstone to return to the Maguuma Bloodstone) implying that it is something unique to that specific Bloodstone.

Until proven otherwise, the bloodstones simply are containers of magic; what’s unclear (to me at least) is if the red crystals’ formation was a designed phenomenon or a natural unavoidable process.

Konig Des Todes.2086

Nothing says the gods are Ascended. Kormir, for example, never Ascended.

There’s more than one way to Ascend. Nothing excludes that the gift the gods gave to Kormir was that of Ascension, (not many other choices on what it could have been) and, before anyone claims: “why then couldn’t the PC absorb Abaddon’s powers?”, PCs native to Nightfall do not Ascend.

—CONTINUES—

Regarding the holograms (and light and dark energies): if anything, when Elli says: “magical construction of light emitted by this device on my belt”, it shows that magitech is used to bend and shape light. While they’re powered by magic, it seems holograms are made of light.
Also, thanks for pointing out the original mention of dark and light energy, it totally slipped from me; this knowledge shows that dark energy and light energy, as intended in GW2, are totally unconnected to what you argue them to be (I wasn’t able to find any mention of light magic and dark magic; all I could find is that necromancers make use of “black magic”. Also, when referring to magic, the term “light” is mostly connected to spells linked to Dwayna, the goddess of air and life. Regarding the GW1 damage types: dark damage is associated to Grenth, chaos damage is associated to Lyssa and holy damage (it is no longer light damage) is associated to Dwayna).

Konig Des Todes.2086

The “presence of all the aspects of magic” is ley lines – this is what Taimi explicitly says in S3E2. And ley lines are prismatic in appearance, with a heavy hue or blue (largely being blue with purple, green, red, and yellow outlines). An sometimes, rarely, they’re yellow with red/purple outline.

The composition of ley lines is an interesting topic: I noticed that the lesser ley lines, like the one generated by Glenna in the Stronghold of the Faithful to traverse the very first bridge, simply appear as blue, no other colour in there. Once we encounter bigger flows we start to observe different colours: firstly, the ley lines themselves appear to scatter into red, green and blue (it’s important to separate the very same ley line from the various magical aspects), secondly we see magic flowing through them. The “golden” ley lines are simply flows overloaded with magic.

Konig Des Todes.2086

“Purple is the color of evil in Tyria.”

Then every mesmer is evil. Seriously though, I personally interpreted this as a humorous response to quickly dismiss two separate entities: Abaddon and Kralkatorrik.
Even if, in my view, dark energy (which I associated with purple) is related to evil/bad…

Konig Des Todes.2086

Also, where does Mordremoth have “pink” magic? All aura hues with Mordremoth and Mordrem are either lime green or dark purple.

For one, various Mordremoth’s vines emit a typical pink hue (in general purple, since there are many gradations).

Konig Des Todes.2086

Point 1, you say all magic is formed of atoms. You use this to argue that dragon magic is the magic we use.
To me, that sounds like saying because gold is made of atoms, and iron is made of similar atoms, they must be the same thing.

It’s amazing how one can distort things. In point 1, I said that the various aspects of magic (fire magic, death magic etc.) are formed by exotic elemental particles like an atom is formed by fermions; they don’t work exactly like atoms. I’m not saying (like you imply) that “dragon magic is the magic we use”, I’m saying that the Dragons use the same magic all other magic users do, which is a natural thing; “Primordus’s magic” is not a thing on its own (to recall the analogy I made earlier, the one about “salt crystals”, they just have access to more magic).
On a side note, gold and iron are atoms (and two distinct ones), they’re not made of atoms but from a different combination of smaller particles.

Konig Des Todes.2086

I do not believe anything says that either reactor drew power from the ley lines.

Either you believe it or not, that’s not the point: your claim is as viable as mine, since we don’t have a clear answer (obviously I believe mine to be more reasonable). For some reason, you chose to believe Scarlet is a liar; I didn’t. I believe what Scarlet says is true and, fairly, it is justifiable by her subsequent actions.
Also, the explosion itself is an indication of the existance of the Anomaly: we now know that upon absorbing too much magical energies these Anomalies will overload and explode; even though we killed it in the fractal (and we know they dissipate when killed) it still exploded, because that’s what happened in reality, and this fractal was generated with the intention to be an exact reproduction of a past event.
Frankly, the term chaos itself indicates that the Inquest did not know what they were dealing with. High quantities of magic (1) and ley lines (2) can lead to chaotic (and catastrophic) events, ripping the very fabric of reality.

—CONTINUES—

Konig Des Todes.2086

You are making the assumption that a ley line runs under the Infinite Coil Reactor! You make the assumption that they knew what ley lines were.

While it is an assumption (and I have no problems in saying so), I believe it is logical and reasonable (and since we don’t really know, the opposite of what I say would also be an assumption). When building the Thaumanova Reactor on an intersection of ley lines, they started drawing magic indistinguishbly, generating chaotic results. With the Infinite Coil Reactor (successor to Thaumanova’s) they didn’t make the same mistake: they differentiated between the magics drawn and very possibly isolated the ley lines themselves (not drawing them), avoiding chaotic results. Kudu however might still have thought those magics were of the Dragons; we know they aren’t.
You base your claims on the assumption that Scarlet is lying: Scarlet says that the Thaumanova Reactor was built on an intersection of ley lines: you assume she’s lying; Scarlet implies that “dragon energies” flow through ley lines: you assume she’s lying; Scarlet told the Inquest they mistook chaos energy for dragon energy: you assume she’s lying. Still she succededly identified and traced ley lines and had understandings of light and dark energies; she knew what she was talking about.
Also, you say nobody ever saw the ley lines when Omadd’s machine makes clear usage of the ley lines.
We know from the fractal that Scarlet shared her knowledge with several Inquest exponents, priorly to the explosion; you make the mistake of assuming nobody else can know about the ley lines (we not knowing does not imply that nobody else in Tyria knows about the ley lines).

Konig Des Todes.2086

And how can you properly experiment with the dragon energies if you’re not pulling them from the source?

Quoting from the wiki: “They intend to siphon the power of the dragon minions to create their own draconic servants”. I bet this assertion is older than our own knowledge about the ley lines; it is nothing more than an assumption, simply because it is unjustifiable (unless I wasn’t able to find any proof).
You seem to agree with the wiki here, to quote you: “[dragon minions] have their energies pulled from so they can be concentrated and put into the subjects…”; you assume they draw magical energies from the captured dragon minions.
You also keep assuming these “dragon energies” generate from the dragons (because the physical alteration is unique to them): just because a water spring may generate loads of rivers and lakes, it’s not implied that all the water we see in the world comes from said spring (Zhaitan spreading death magic doesn’t imply that death magic generates from him).

Konig Des Todes.2086

And they did capture mordrem, technically – just “purified mordrem” in a way.

Those that you refer to as “purified mordrem” are honestly a demonstration of plant magic; they’re connectable to mordrem just because the latters are also made from plant magic.

Regarding the margonites: what I meant was that tyrians in general aren’t able to physically compare a margonite to a dragon minion, since they don’t have access to the former anymore. Still, we know margonites were different, because they weren’t constrained in the mind, and could still choose to abandon Abaddon’s cause if they wanted to.
Regarding the Flame Legion shamans: while they make a heavy use of fire magic, which causes an alteration in their bodies similarly to “physical corruption”, everyone still behaves as an individual; there’s no reason for tyrians to link “dragon corruption” to them. Also, Flame Legion shamans strictly focused on fire magic following a natural specialization process; I really doubt they fiddled around with the ley lines.

Sock.2785:

Most of what we know about magic and “dragon corruption” comes from our own deductions; it follows that it can be false.

I’m gonna be semi-busy for the next few hours but I want to touch this.

We know a lot about magic and dragon corruption. It isn’t mere deduction. We know that both magic and draconic energy divides into different aspects, we know that draconic energy can mix (as proven by Rising Flames), we know that if it mixes with non-dragon magic (e.g., chaos magic) that it reacts violently, we know that magic consumed by Elder Dragons can become dragon magic though we don’t know the exact how of that.

And that’s just major points.

Ended up forgetting to respond to the rest of this so in addition to above…

Sock.2785:

I’m trying to explain how the Dragons were naturally driven to control others’ minds and that the whole corruptive process isn’t their prerogative;

The problem here is that you’re proclaiming all Elder Dragons are the same in their desire to corrupt, but we’re explicitly told that isn’t the case.

Prime example being Jormag: while he does corrupt, he has a preference to only corrupt those who willingly ask for power.

The corruption process is very clearly and explicitly presented as their prerogative. This is what makes Primordus different from Jormag different from Kralkatorrik different from Zhaitan different from Mordremoth.

The corruption process and reasoning behind it.

All Snaff’s research excerpt really states is that you control magic with your thoughts… which is true. It says nothing about overriding one’s free will, whether by magic user or by magic addiction.

Sock.2785:

I’m saying that “dragon energies” are not specific and unique “dragon magics” nor are generated by the Dragons, but are natural things (the whole particles/forces thing) indipendent to them.

Which contradicts every stated fact that we know about draconic energy/dragon magic.

And the fact that you will never, ever hear the term “dragon magic” or “draconic energy” without direct relation to the Elder Dragons.

Sock.2785:

It may not be the exact same research but the knowledge we get when reading that extract from Snaff is that: magic (1) is everywhere; magic (1) tends to ebb and flow into these magical currents, or ley lines (2); mind and magic are linked; it’s possible to manipulate magical elements with the mind (through magitech if one’s mind is not powerful enough or when referring to golemancy).
Manipulating magical elements with the mind is what the Elder Dragons do (and it’s what I’m trying to evidentiate from the beginning: “physical” and “mental” corruption). Each Elder Dragon goes through this mental process, regardless of their “sphere of influence” (what kind of magic they imbue their victims with).
Kudu perverted his old master’s research to make his own dragon champions.
When Logan says: “[Kudu]’s been corrupted by the dragon energies”, Zojja just responds: “it is an improvement”; Kudu is not under any Dragon’s influence even though he’s using these “dragon energies”.

1) Given the history of humanity, it seems very evident that Snaff was simply wrong.

2) There is no mental corruption, just the removal of free will and creation of a mental link (hive mind). Unless this is what you’re referring to with “mental corruption” in which case you’re using a confusing misnomer.

3) To play devil’s advocate: we actually cannot say that Kudu was not under any Elder Dragon’s influence mentally, given that we do not talk to him long enough when he’s been corrupted. Even if he did have his own free will and had no mental link to any Elder Dragon (which I would argue is the case), this is still a case of dragon magic being altered. And still dragon magic not your presented “drawing magic straight from the ley lines”.

Sock.2785:

Magic is and will always be in Tyria’s universe, it does not get destroyed when the Elder Dragons absorb it; you can’t take it out of Tyria’s universe because it’s a fundamental part of said universe. The laws of (magi)physics remain the same even with low levels of magic in the world: the link between the mind and magic is something deeper and more fundamental. To visualize, imagine them to be almost like electricity and magnetism: two faces of the same coin (don’t take this too literally, it’s just a way to show their connection).

You entirely missed the point.

Worlds can exist without magic. History of humanity, where they come from a magicless world, proves this.

You cannot destroy magic – no one argued otherwise – but while Ogden state that Tyria would crumble without magic, that doesn’t make it so given we have a proven case of a world without magic existing for some time (humanity entered the world with no idea what magic was or that it could exist, thus thought the gods created it).

Sock.2785:

Until proven otherwise, the bloodstones simply are containers of magic; what’s unclear (to me at least) is if the red crystals’ formation was a designed phenomenon or a natural unavoidable process.

I think I just stated the exact reason to believe that it is proven otherwise. Captain Grumby was killed atop of a bloodstone, yet he is not crazed like those killed atop of the Maguuma Bloodstone.

He is proof that it is proven otherwise.

And we know that Bloodstones were designed – do the Burden of Choice achievement line. The Seers created the Bloodstone via the Shadowstone.

Sock.2785:

There’s more than one way to Ascend. Nothing excludes that the gift the gods gave to Kormir was that of Ascension, (not many other choices on what it could have been)

Nothing suggests it either. There are plenty of other possibilities, the most likely being that it was the reason why Abaddon – a god – couldn’t just instantly kill the group.

Sock.2785:

Regarding the holograms (and light and dark energies): if anything, when Elli says: “magical construction of light emitted by this device on my belt”, it shows that magitech is used to bend and shape light. While they’re powered by magic, it seems holograms are made of light.

If that was the case, they would not be capable of damaging things. Originally they likely were just light, but when Elli and Zott improved it for combat in Orr, the holograms were capable of protecting Elli and attacking risen – just as the holograms she sold to LA that were stolen and reconstructed by Scarlet/Aetherblades.

Sock.2785:

Also, thanks for pointing out the original mention of dark and light energy, it totally slipped from me; this knowledge shows that dark energy and light energy, as intended in GW2, are totally unconnected to what you argue them to be (I wasn’t able to find any mention of light magic and dark magic; all I could find is that necromancers make use of “black magic”. Also, when referring to magic, the term “light” is mostly connected to spells linked to Dwayna, the goddess of air and life. Regarding the GW1 damage types: dark damage is associated to Grenth, chaos damage is associated to Lyssa and holy damage (it is no longer light damage) is associated to Dwayna).

It doesn’t really show much of anything, except that they exist and that they are different. And certainly don’t show what you argued them to be – nothing even close.

My arguments actually stem from GW1 damage types – necromancers used dark/unholy damage while monks/paragons used holy damage. In the novels, I believe necromancy is described as dark magic and guardian as light magic as well.

However, I do not ever recall “black magic” being used, ever, and even if it was that – without context – sounds like people thinking it is evil and whatnot, which a lot of folks do think – and has nothing to do with energy type.

Sock.2785:

Then every mesmer is evil. Seriously though, I personally interpreted this as a humorous response to quickly dismiss two separate entities: Abaddon and Kralkatorrik.
Even if, in my view, dark energy (which I associated with purple) is related to evil/bad…

Then you’d call every necromancer evil.

Thing is that we see purple with every Elder Dragons’ corruption to small degrees (sans Primordus). So whether the comment was originally a joke, it has been kept around and remains evident. That said, I think the idea is “all evil has purple hues, but not all purple is evil”.

Sock.2785:

For one, various Mordremoth’s vines emit a typical pink hue (in general purple, since there are many gradations).

Those are always dark purple…

Only bright color there is tied to Mordremoth is lime.

Sock.2785:

I’m not saying (like you imply) that “dragon magic is the magic we use”, I’m saying that the Dragons use the same magic all other magic users do, which is a natural thing;

How is this at all different?

“Elder Dragons use the same magic everyone else uses”

“Dragon magic (Defined as the magic Elder Dragons use) is the same magic we use”

It’s the EXACT SAME THING.

Sock.2785:

Either you believe it or not, that’s not the point: your claim is as viable as mine, since we don’t have a clear answer (obviously I believe mine to be more reasonable).

Baseless conjecture is not the same thing as supported theorycrafting.

There are support for this, despite your claims. There are facts for this topic, despite your claim.

So it isn’t a case of “believe it or not”.

Sock.2785:

Also, the explosion itself is an indication of the existance of the Anomaly: we now know that upon absorbing too much magical energies these Anomalies will overload and explode;

Explosions can happen for multiple reasons, you know.

Sock.2785:

even though we killed it in the fractal (and we know they dissipate when killed) it still exploded, because that’s what happened in reality, and this fractal was generated with the intention to be an exact reproduction of a past event.

That’s not how fractals work.

Even if a fractal is an exact duplicate, the events change the moment the PCs enter the fractal.

Ree Soesbee: If it was just the actual battle, if it was just a very precise rendition of history, you couldn’t go fight there, you couldn’t do things there. The Mists very much are flexible because they’re like memories – you can go back in your own minds and sort of write someone into a memory where they weren’t there and what would have happened ‘if this person went to the movies with us.’ And the fractals are very simpler, the Mists are very simpler.

Sock.2785:

Frankly, the term chaos itself indicates that the Inquest did not know what they were dealing with. High quantities of magic (1) and ley lines (2) can lead to chaotic (and catastrophic) events, ripping the very fabric of reality.

It may be that high quantities of magic can lead to chaotic situations, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t dealing with a type of magic that specifically deals with altering the order of reality.

You know… Mesmers’ magic?

Kind of why they have a trait line that says “Chaos Magic”…

Sock.2785:

With the Infinite Coil Reactor (successor to Thaumanova’s) they didn’t make the same mistake: they differentiated between the magics drawn and very possibly isolated the ley lines themselves (not drawing them), avoiding chaotic results. Kudu however might still have thought those magics were of the Dragons; we know they aren’t.

You’re now contradicting yourself. Earlier you said they pulled magic from the ley lines to duplicate dragon corruption.

Now you’re saying they didn’t draw from ley lines.

It cannot be both.

Sock.2785:

You base your claims on the assumption that Scarlet is lying: Scarlet says that the Thaumanova Reactor was built on an intersection of ley lines: you assume she’s lying; Scarlet implies that “dragon energies” flow through ley lines: you assume she’s lying; Scarlet told the Inquest they mistook chaos energy for dragon energy: you assume she’s lying. Still she succededly identified and traced ley lines and had understandings of light and dark energies; she knew what she was talking about.

Way to take what I said out of context and way into left field.

I said that Scarlet was lying that the Inquest mistook dragon energy for chaos magic. To say otherwise is to say that four smart individuals, including two that had first hand experience, are wrong. Either Scarlet was lying, or Ellen Kiel, Marjory Delaqua, and two Inquest members were lying. They couldn’t all be telling the truth.

I never said Scarlet lied about Thaumanova being over ley lines – we know this is true per the Season 1 finale cinematic.

I never said anything about Scarlet implying dragon energies running through ley lines – however, I will say now that nothing in her dialogue implies this. She only mentioned that because of the Inquest’s experiments with dragon magic she was able to identify ley lines. Nothing there implies that dragon magic flows through ley lines. For all we know, it could be that the dragon magic was trying to absorb the ley lines, or that it had a noticeable reaction to ley line magic that she was able to trace.

Just because she knew what she was talking about doesn’t mean she was telling the truth.

Sock.2785:

Also, you say nobody ever saw the ley lines when Omadd’s machine makes clear usage of the ley lines.

It makes clear usage of the ley lines after Scarlet moved the machine there.

The Existence of ley lines has long been theorized, and they have had many names. In 1316, a sylvari named Ceara (alias Scarlet Briar) found proof.

Do your research, please.

Ley lines weren’t confirmed until Ceara – as Scarlet Briar – figured it out (I’m fairly certain 1316 is a typo for 1326, given that in 1316 Scarlet would have been with the charr gladium at the time).

Sock.2785:

We know from the fractal that Scarlet shared her knowledge with several Inquest exponents, priorly to the explosion; you make the mistake of assuming nobody else can know about the ley lines (we not knowing does not imply that nobody else in Tyria knows about the ley lines).

The only thing she’s stated to have shared is claiming all the chaos magic was draconic energies. Which counters what’s brought up later, and does not involve the discovery of ley lines.

It was actually Ellen Kiel who spread the knowledge of ley lines.

“Scarlet claimed to have identifies the channels that this magical energy follows as it courses in and around and through the globe. If she’s right, it could be a significant breakthrough.”

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Captain_Ellen_Kiel/dialogue#Fractured.21

Kiel wouldn’t be saying it’d be a significant breakthrough if ley lines were known prior to the end of 1326 AE.

Sock.2785:

You also keep assuming these “dragon energies” generate from the dragons (because the physical alteration is unique to them): just because a water spring may generate loads of rivers and lakes, it’s not implied that all the water we see in the world comes from said spring (Zhaitan spreading death magic doesn’t imply that death magic generates from him).

I “keep assuming” because that is what every piece of lore tells us.

That is the very definition of “draconic energies”. Corruptive magic from the Elder Dragons.

I don’t know how to make this any more clear to you.

The term “dragon magic” and “draconic energies” is only and always used in reference to the corrupting magic, the stuff that creates dragon minions. Without. Exception.

Sock.2785:

Regarding the margonites: what I meant was that tyrians in general aren’t able to physically compare a margonite to a dragon minion, since they don’t have access to the former anymore. Still, we know margonites were different, because they weren’t constrained in the mind, and could still choose to abandon Abaddon’s cause if they wanted to.

Honestly, not being able to see a Margonite would not stop people from making an association so long as they had a reliable (to them) description.

If you think people are more logical than that – in either games or in reality – you’re fooling yourself.

Sock.2785:

Regarding the Flame Legion shamans: while they make a heavy use of fire magic, which causes an alteration in their bodies similarly to “physical corruption”, everyone still behaves as an individual; there’s no reason for tyrians to link “dragon corruption” to them. Also, Flame Legion shamans strictly focused on fire magic following a natural specialization process; I really doubt they fiddled around with the ley lines.

Ehhhhh….

Burn, buuurn!

You sure about that?