Guild Wars 2

What do you think will happen when all the elder dragons are killed? Can we prevent it?

Theories

1. The same thing that happened at the Thaumanova Reactor, only on a much, much larger scale. The different forms of magic released from the elder dragons will combine to tear a big rip in the fabric of reality.

2. The large amount of magic released will once again attract the human gods to Tyria, much like how they were attracted to Orr.

3. Tyria will tip and everything will fall of.

4. It won’t happen. The last elder dragon will absorb too much magic and become too powerful to defeat. Long live Bubbles the Indestructible!

Prevention

1. Use bloodstone like structures to mimic the function of elder dragons.

2. Don’t kill any more elder dragons.

Glint’s baby could possibly serve as our tiny little pet magic sponge.

1) This is the most likely scenario, in sorts. In Hidden Arcana, Ogden states that too much magic will cause the world to fall into chaos.

2) This is highly unlikely. By indication, the only reason why the Six Gods arrived on Tyria is because they were seeking a new home. They left voluntarily long before the Elder Dragons were a threat, so them returning unless they’re needed is highly unlikely.

3) That’s metaphorical at best, a nod to the old “the Earth is flat” beliefs at worse, as Tyria is not flat but a sphere.

4) And thus wipe out all life on the world. Unlikely, ArenaNet doesn’t like giving bad endings.

Prevention number 3 is what Nero mentioned, and that seems to be where the plot is going. “Glint’s legacy” is a plan worked on by Glint and the Forgotten to prevent magical build up and kill off the Elder Dragons. Glint’s egg seems to be a main piece but not the only piece.

Whatever Glint’s legacy is in full is what we’ll be doing to counter the build up of magic while killing off the remaining Elder Dragons.

I know this is unrelated but im having a hard time understanding magic i made post farther up on the forums could someone please help me out?

We’re gonna turn all the magic into Guns and shoot the gods if they try to come back, obviously.

Also the Pale Tree might be able to help control magic, she is a dragon minion after all. So we have two potential replacement elder dragons. Later stories might add more.

Fjaeldmark.9043:

Also the Pale Tree might be able to help control magic, she is a dragon minion after all. So we have two potential replacement elder dragons. Later stories might add more.

Dragon minions don’t absorb magic, unlike the Elder dragons. She is incapable of consuming magic, and keeping it at relative level. If she was actually capable, then Modrem wouldn’t had this much influence over the land.

Dlarnkk.1068:

Dragon minions don’t absorb magic.

That’s actually not true. We know that even mundane dragon minions can soak up magic, which they presumably then relay to their masters in some manner.

There is a question of whether all minions can do this, or if it’s something most minions are specialized for but certain others aren’t, and how much a minion can actually hold on its own, and whether a minion freed before her sprouting would know how to do it, and whether she’d even want to do so… but from what we know right now, the Pale Tree can’t be counted out as a potential replacement.

Assuming she ever wakes up.

Dlarnkk.1068:

Fjaeldmark.9043:

Also the Pale Tree might be able to help control magic, she is a dragon minion after all. So we have two potential replacement elder dragons. Later stories might add more.

Dragon minions don’t absorb magic, unlike the Elder dragons. She is incapable of consuming magic, and keeping it at relative level. If she was actually capable, then Modrem wouldn’t had this much influence over the land.

Untrue:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Field_Test

Professor Gorr: This is fantastic! The larger the minion presence, the less ambient magic! Finally, irrefutable proof of my theory. The dragons do consume magic.

We also see icebrood, destroyers, and branded absorbing magic in the most recently added ley line events:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_the_dragon_minions_before_they_absorb_too_much_ley-line_magic

As well as Mordremoth’s vines in S2 (too many sources – Aaron linked one). Absorbing magic is even why the asura at the Megadestroyer asked “did we just make it bigger?”

Furthermore, Glint was absorbing magic, yet not an Elder Dragon:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Short_Story:_The_Trek_of_the_Zephyrites

We’re coming here to retrieve whatever remains of her magical corpus, so that her sacred bones won’t fall into the wrong hands. Dragons consume magic, but they do not destroy it. They hold it within themselves like a sponge holds water. I only hope we’re faster than the scavengers and power-mongers who would use her body to advance their own evil or selfish plots.

However, the Brotherhood of the Dragon believed she could have become an Elder Dragon:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Arcana#At_the_Durmand_Priory

Ogden Stonehealer: The brotherhood believed that she would one day become an Elder Dragon. She was old and wise, well on her way.

It also seems that Tequatl is absorbing magic, and that’s why it became more powerful:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee/

A: When an Elder Dragon dies, its magic isn’t just snuffed out. It doesn’t vanish. The creature itself is dead, but the magic that it put into the world through its creations is still there. Tequatl’s evolution is an aftereffect of the death of Zhaitan. The magic used to create Tequatl is no longer being controlled by Zhaitan, but it still exists within Tequatl. Therefore, like many uncontrolled magics, it is experiencing an evolution and it is shaping itself.

TL;DR

Yes, every dragon minion can absorb magic. And the more magic they absorb, the more powerful they become, and the closer – theoretically – to becoming a new Elder Dragon they are.

So yes, the Pale Tree could absorb magic – chances are she has been for some time. In technicality, so could every sylvari out there, though we’ve not seen a single case of this (one of the many discrepancies between sylvari and all other dragon minions that made the revelation dumbfounded). The question is “how much can she absorb” and “is she in a state to absorb magic”.

Given that the ley lines are acting up, she’s not able to do so at the rate the world needs ATM.

I don’t believe that we will kill anymore elder dragons. We will find an alternate solution

Should all dragons be defeated (the bad ones at least) I don’t think the leftover minions would have the capacity to soak up magic as the dragons do.
The more powerful minions would soak up more than others, and become notably more powerful, which would then lead to them getting destroyed by us, releasing the magic again. And without the dragons, minions would slowly get wiped out in time, so even fewer beings that can take the place of the dragons.

Perhaps though, the gods and spirits, and other similar beings could take their place.

Well something would have to take their place. It’s been stated, and we’re starting to see the effects of it, that Tyria can only handle so much magic. Now the leylines are overflowing and what we’re seeing is basically rivers of magic overflowing their banks, and that’s only after magic was forcefully released from 1 elder dragon. I mean Zhaitan didn’t die in the same way and his magic should be slowly seeping into the world. If we kill too many more Elder Dragons without replacing the position that they fill (when it comes to maintaining magic levels) we could very well destroy Tyria.

We’ve seen in the events the ley line coalesce into elementals. With more magic released back into the World, I wonder if it could coalesce into even more powerful forms.

If this is true, and not explained away by other means, this could give an explanation to the existence of Elementals, Djinn, and (if you try really hard) the existence of life itself. I mean, we already know that the soul is powerful magic, would it be really be that hard to believe that the body is merely flesh drawn together like rock, water or fire to encase and protect said souls, which are honestly no more than highly concentrated magic that gained sentience?

It’s actually been stated a few times that elementals naturally appear where ambient magic is strong, though these tend to be mindless. It’s not much of a stretch to say that ambient magic being strong is where ley lines are close – especially since when ley lines were talked about, I believe it was Scott McGough, stated that they were ‘being hinted at’ (or some variation thereof) via the comments of ambient magic.

Djinn were said to be effectively “sapient elementals” I believe – by Jeff Grubb.

I’d be hesitant to point at beings of flesh and blood and say “this is their origin too” – it’s more likely to me that the Mists is a closer origin since we know that the Mists can create even fleshy landscapes (Realm of Torment).

Oh I personally doubt that to be true, I just figure Tyrian life has to have some reason for existence other than evolution. I mean with Elder Dragons wiping out all life every 1,000-10,000 years normal evolution just isn’t an answer. Of course The Mists is the easy answer for everything related to that. But do we have any evidence of The Mists directly effecting Tyria in that way? I mean I can’t think of a situation where The Mists just generated life forms within Tyria. Or are you of the opinion that The Mists creates life and then the life forms find their way to Tyria.

Either every 3,000 years or 11,000 years from what we’ve been able to gather – depending on whether the Priory is right, or all our lore on ancient races proves the Priory wrong.

But if the jotun are any indication, the Elder Dragons are pretty crappy at wiping all life every cycle – after all, they have knowledge of multiple dragonrises prior to the current one. And from Hidden Arcana, it seems that the tengu and charr survived the last dragonrise without Glint’s aid.

And I also recall a study in gold mentions the seer’s in a way that makes them seem to have created bloodstones for multiple dragon rises.

Yeah, it kind of sounds like Bloodstones (multiple, not just the one the Seers made) were meant to keep magic regulated so that the Elder Dragons wouldn’t have enough to wake up again. But it was still built in the previous dragonrise.

I theorize that the plan was to make one to force the Elder Dragons into an early starvation-enforced-hibernation, and to make a second one after centuries of magical build up from the Elder Dragons’ sleeping bodies, which would force them to be unable to wake and consume magic – or at least leave them significantly weaker than they would be.

But for xyz reason (most likely the mursaat), the Seers were incapable of building a second bloodstone – and the Forgotten not having the, quote, “divine resources” to build one themselves.

By the sounds of it, it seems that the Elder Dragons were significantly stronger in the previous dragonrises, and are weaker this time thanks to the Bloodstone’s creation in holding back most magic. But even then, if the jotun could survive multiple dragonrises, why wouldn’t others?

I’m not so sure the Elder Dragons have wiped out all civilized life on the world before, just that they could if they had enough personal magic (seems to me that six is too many Elder Dragons, and now that there’s four, who’s to say that they won’t be able to accomplish their goals now?).

Reviving this topic since it was the one to touch djinn forming from ley lines – today’s added events make this all the more likely.

Now [ley line anomalies and fragments](http://i.imgur.com/F3eJaUi.jpg) spawn as part of these new events.

Curiously, the ley line anomalies are [very similar to the Thaumanova Anomaly](http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thaumanova_Anomaly) from what I’ve seen (not encountered them yet – just seen images taken by others). I’ve always noted the Thaumanova Anomaly to be similar to GW1’s [air-based djinn](http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Diamond_Djinn) – in color, its lightning, and it being a spear thrower.

Could we be seeing the birth of new djinn? Would explain who Zomorros knows so much about ancient times (as shown in The Lost Shores) if he – like other djinn – were born at the beginning of the previous dragonrise, when magic was in large quantities.

I had also noted the similarity to the Thaumanova Anomaly boss, although right now it is harder to get much visuals on it due to the sheer number of players on it. Whilst I wasn’t a huge fan of the messiness of this event, it certainly seems to be the most interesting one in terms of it what it could represent.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Either every 3,000 years or 11,000 years from what we’ve been able to gather – depending on whether the Priory is right, or all our lore on ancient races proves the Priory wrong.

But if the jotun are any indication, the Elder Dragons are pretty crappy at wiping all life every cycle – after all, they have knowledge of multiple dragonrises prior to the current one. And from Hidden Arcana, it seems that the tengu and charr survived the last dragonrise without Glint’s aid.

I never took the lore to mean that the elder dragons intentionally wiped out all life in the world every time they woke up. I mean just from Zhaitan and Mordremoth it seems more like they have a certain goal in mind (we’ve been told that they think differently from other sentient creatures, so its probably a goal we don’t understand) and won’t hesitate to kill anything that gets in their way. It always seemed that until your character made it personal with the dragon he just saw you as something in the way of his goal and therefor he was clearing the way to his goal.

Randulf.7614:

I had also noted the similarity to the Thaumanova Anomaly boss, although right now it is harder to get much visuals on it due to the sheer number of players on it. Whilst I wasn’t a huge fan of the messiness of this event, it certainly seems to be the most interesting one in terms of it what it could represent.

Having seen the boss personally I can confirm from the UI portrait – it has the same odd triangle-positioned three “eyes” on the face.

It definitely is the same model.

OriOri.8724:

I never took the lore to mean that the elder dragons intentionally wiped out all life in the world every time they woke up. I mean just from Zhaitan and Mordremoth it seems more like they have a certain goal in mind (we’ve been told that they think differently from other sentient creatures, so its probably a goal we don’t understand) and won’t hesitate to kill anything that gets in their way. It always seemed that until your character made it personal with the dragon he just saw you as something in the way of his goal and therefor he was clearing the way to his goal.

Zhaitan, Jormag, Primordus, and Mordremoth all go out of their way – via champions or personally – to assault civilizations.

The Great Destroyer alone is said to have wiped out several underground civilizations before it reached the surface. After waking, Primordus went after the six underground citadel-cities that included Quora Sum and the Central Transfer Chamber (all being on par to modern Rata Sum). Zhaitan – through Blightghast and Captain Whiting – assaulted Lion’s Arch several times (as well as other port cities) without known cause. Etc. Etc.

While “wiping out all civilizations” doesn’t seem to be their ultimate goal, for nearly every one of them it does seem to be a big step along the way.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Could we be seeing the birth of new djinn? Would explain who Zomorros knows so much about ancient times (as shown in The Lost Shores) if he – like other djinn – were born at the beginning of the previous dragonrise, when magic was in large quantities.

That could well be right. We know from Prophecies that elementals form from high concentrations of magic in an area. We know from discussions of how dragon minions work that more magical energy is required for sapience. Djinn being sapient (and usually more magically powerful) elementals, it stands to reason that they’d be formed from particularly strong concentrations of magic.

when all the elder dragons are dead we will see the tengu elona an cantha and the return of the gods