Guild Wars 2

How did the machine make Jormag supposedly go asleep as well? They were going to use the machine to dive into the eternal alchemy and destroy both dragons from there by manipulating their magics.

But clearly the machine was used in a different way with Balthazar’s intervention, and of course it was destroyed. I do not understand how Jormag became affected by it when it was being used to sap magic from Primordus.

I’m guessing Primordus went dormant because of all the magic that got sapped out of him by Balthazar with the direct connection with the machine, and destroying said machine dispersed that magic. But Jormag? Was he being sapped out of his magic as well, even though the machine wasn’t connected to him, but only to Prim? This confuses me.

The plan was originally to use the machine to pit the energies of Jormag and Primordus against each other, so the machine was set up for that purpose when Balthazar stole it. When big B then gets inside the machine and uses it, he is intercepting that energy for himself. Since he had it right next to Primordus, we saw the effects on Primordus, but the same thing was happening to Jormag far away. When the machine was on it was working on both dragons at the same time. Now, if it works at such long ranges, why would B bring it right next to an elder dragon? I am guessing because B had a base of operations already set up nearby, and since the player couldn’t immediately follow him into the volcano it worked as a stalling tactic.

That’s really confusing, as you said, why would he bring it to Primordus, and why would the machine have a clearly visible energy link to Prim. Also, can Balthazar, god of fire, would be fine if he absorbed Jormag’s magic (ice magic)? Or does the dragon energy has no element when in its pure form? I’m guessing Balth got overwhelmed by the power, not knowing that he was absorbing two polar-opposite magics and got destroyed (if he really is gone though).

Your theory about taking it to the volcano so the player can’t follow him makes sense, but this is still really confusing

Knuckle Joe.7408:

That’s really confusing, as you said, why would he bring it to Primordus, and why would the machine have a clearly visible energy link to Prim. Also, can Balthazar, god of fire, would be fine if he absorbed Jormag’s magic (ice magic)? Or does the dragon energy has no element when in its pure form? I’m guessing Balth got overwhelmed by the power, not knowing that he was absorbing two polar-opposite magics and got destroyed (if he really is gone though).

Your theory about taking it to the volcano so the player can’t follow him makes sense, but this is still really confusing

Balthazar isn’t dead, he vanished but the devs mentioned that we have not seen the last of him. Also, Balthazar is the god of fire, but the gods use divine magic that seems to be immune to dragon corruption, so he could probably use the magic from whatever dragon happened to be feeding it into the machine.

And yeah, it is STILL confusing at this point.

The orange energy was from Primordus. The blue one was from Jormag. The machine exchanged them a few times, launching blue energy into Primordus and orange to Jormag, far in the north. Balthazar put himself in the way to absorb some of that.

What made the thing really confusing was to see Primordus right there, while not seeing anything about Jormag anywhere.

Moonyeti.3296:

The plan was originally to use the machine to pit the energies of Jormag and Primordus against each other, so the machine was set up for that purpose when Balthazar stole it. When big B then gets inside the machine and uses it, he is intercepting that energy for himself. Since he had it right next to Primordus, we saw the effects on Primordus, but the same thing was happening to Jormag far away. When the machine was on it was working on both dragons at the same time. Now, if it works at such long ranges, why would B bring it right next to an elder dragon? I am guessing because B had a base of operations already set up nearby, and since the player couldn’t immediately follow him into the volcano it worked as a stalling tactic.

—sigh—the story is a mess after chapter 5. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

Still, this is how I interpret it.

It’s been established that killing elder dragons destabilizes Tyria. So Taimi invents a machine to “pit Jormag and Primordus’ energies against each other”. But here’s the thing, doesn’t that just make things WORSE? Think about it. You have two dragons that are AWAKE and FIGHTING. That clash of magic is going to rock Tyria even further. A dragon that is merely just awake means that magic in Tyria is already out of balance.

So, I guess it’s thanks to Taimi’s shenanigans that the freakin’ human GOD OF WAR haphazardly made his debut and bailed out her little behind by absorbing the impact of the clashing energies of Primordus and Jormag and putting them to sleep.

If this is what was intended, then it should’ve been explained a lot better.

JTGuevara.9018:

It’s been established that killing elder dragons destabilizes Tyria. So Taimi invents a machine to “pit Jormag and Primordus’ energies against each other”. But here’s the thing, doesn’t that just make things WORSE?

The entire episode has Taimi wailing in self-pity over the whole “why didn’t I think to see what would happen if we killed them!?”

She explains during your hunt for the Elder Druids’ protection that she (and everyone in general who is part of the fight against the Elder Dragons) knew that their deaths results in magic being released in to Tyria and that it’s not so good. However, she also states that everyone figured we could just fix the environment after killing the Elder Dragons – “one problem at a time” kind of thing, that killing the Elder Dragons would be not so good, but still the better alternative to letting them rampage.

Her recent simulation, however, proved that line of thought to be wrong, that killing just one more Elder Dragon will put Tyria past the tipping point.

JTGuevara.9018:

You have two dragons that are AWAKE and FIGHTING. That clash of magic is going to rock Tyria even further. A dragon that is merely just awake means that magic in Tyria is already out of balance.

Wrong on all three accounts. Firstly, Primordus and Jormag had been awake for over 150 years (200 years for Primordus). Secondly, them being awake doesn’t mean “magic in Tyria is out of balance” – the Elder Dragons simply wake when there’s a lot of magic in the world. But “a lot of magic” is not the same as “out of balance”, and even then the Elder Dragons do not intend to balance magic – their balancing of magic is merely a side effect of their very hostile and evil actions.

Thirdy, the plan was not to have Primordus and Jormag fight each other, nor were they fighting, but to use their their magic against each other – which would be (theoretically, debunked now in Episode 5) far less dangerous to Tyria.

JTGuevara.9018:

So, I guess it’s thanks to Taimi’s shenanigans that the freakin’ human GOD OF WAR haphazardly made his debut and bailed out her little behind by absorbing the impact of the clashing energies of Primordus and Jormag and putting them to sleep.

Balthazar’s actions actually would have killed Primordus and Jormag. The reason they went to sleep wasn’t because Balthazar absorbed magic, but because we stopped Balthazar by destroying the machine. But enough damage had been done to Primordus that its energy had “subsided to pre-awakening level” (we do not know if Jormag suffered the same fate, I’m doubtful as the final burst of energy to hit an Elder Dragon, which destroyed the machine after it overloaded and put Primordus to sleep, was Jormag’s, so Jormag didn’t get as much Primordus power as Primordus had gotten of Jormag power).

I also want to note that had it not been for Balthazar, Taimi would have tested her machine on small minions to see what the result was. That result would more than likely have been “small scale explosion” and would in turn make Taimi run the simulation she ran due to Balthazar stealing the machine.

So Balthazar had in the end made matters worse the entire time, never helped matters. Though had he not done such, then both Elder Dragons would be active still.