Guild Wars 2

One day I was discussing the elder dragons with one of my friend and I told him I was very dissapointed to learnt that Zhaitan was defeated/killed in Arah Story mode, and that I and many others were really disappointed and surprised of his defeat because of how powerful dragons are.
( In all the storyline and lore, dragons were like a “natural phenomena” that exist long before the human and the Six. A single breath, movement can already completely change geography of the world, blah blah blah )

You could see there are lots of dragons surrounding Zhaitan during the fight in Arah, though “Zhaitan” was defeated, his minions in Orr and other smaller dragons didn’t disappeared. That’s one proof and everyone knows it.

Now his theory was, the name “Zhaitan” itself was actually a rank of the Risen race, much like Kings and Queens of the human, where the most powerful undead dragon was referred as Zhaitan by the humans. The undead dragons can grow just like every other race on Tyria to became its lieutenants and finally became the leader of the race, “Zhaitan”.

This can be applied to other dragon races such as the icebrood, my friend asked me why the Claw of Jormag “respawned” every now and then, and I answered him because it was just a game. ( Of course !? ) And yet he suggested that there are so many ice dragons to take the place as the lieutenant ( and there are many lieutenants ), and so does the “Jormag” of the ice dragon race.

This also explained why the dragons have awakened before but nothing can defeat them as they could grow minions and these minions can grow, eventually took their places.

Interesting, i dont believe that Zhaitan is dead, because it was just to easy to kill him.

Zhaitan was a group of dragons, so i think he can regenerate.

I don’t think that’s true, NPC’s say there are multiple CoJ’s, I think they were scouting/Pushing Jormag’s corruption soutwards. But they can’t become the new Jormag.

The power of the ED isn’t the same as the Power of the six, I don’t think 1 being can handle that amount of power anyways.

What I love to think is that the dragon we killed wasn’t Zaithan, but it’s just the biggest champion of Zaithan. Zaithan is much bigger dragon and after you defeat “Zaithan”, he pops up :p

Shard of Zhaitan

Shard of Zhaitan
Item type Trophy Rarity Rare Binding Account Bound

“
A small piece of Zhaitan, forever dead.

Henge.3907:

Shard of Zhaitan

Shard of Zhaitan
Item type Trophy Rarity Rare Binding Account Bound

“
A small piece of Zhaitan, forever dead.

you do know the tooth of Jormag was in Hoelbrak right at the start of the game?

You guys are missing some really crucial facts, the ‘fight’ against Zhaitain wasn’t just that final little bit in the end of Arah Story mode. We’ve been fighting him through the entire personal story, trying to find his weaknesses and ways to fight the dragons corruption. The 5 races have banded together and merged their knowledge and technologies and have fought through the hordes of Orr.

Just because the fight seemed ‘easy’ mechanically doesn’t mean that it actually was easy by any means. Zhaitan is dead, the Pact and the PC worked very hard to achieve that, I’m sorry none of you seem to recognise all the effort that they put into it >.>

I would still like to see his corpse. We just see him plunge into the fog, and that’s it. I hope Anet eventually adds the lair of Zhaitan as an explorable, where we can see he is truly dead.

Originally we could see Zhaitan’s Corpse inside Arah Explorable. In fact, he could see his corpse in early trailers and beta forms of the Arah Map. He was removed from the final version because his new corpse is too big, I assume.

Everytime there seems to be someone popping up that Zhaitan is not dead with a new theory.

He IS dead. He has been for months, probably for half a year already.

People were so dissapointed by how it ended that they’re trying to find ways to create a fantasy where Zhaitan is still lurking and a threat.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

You guys are missing some really crucial facts, the ‘fight’ against Zhaitain wasn’t just that final little bit in the end of Arah Story mode. We’ve been fighting him through the entire personal story, trying to find his weaknesses and ways to fight the dragons corruption. The 5 races have banded together and merged their knowledge and technologies and have fought through the hordes of Orr.

Just because the fight seemed ‘easy’ mechanically doesn’t mean that it actually was easy by any means. Zhaitan is dead, the Pact and the PC worked very hard to achieve that, I’m sorry none of you seem to recognise all the effort that they put into it >.>

I guess most people do notice this LOL

A good point here in fact, it could be true but I do hope the storyline weren’t so straightforward in gw2, especially there were so many twists and bends in gw1 and there are so many question remains about the dragon race. Especially why Zhaitan was so aggressive to the races of Tyria while the other dragons remains relatively silent after the awakening.

Kain Francois.4328:

Originally we could see Zhaitan’s Corpse inside Arah Explorable. In fact, he could see his corpse in early trailers and beta forms of the Arah Map. He was removed from the final version because his new corpse is too big, I assume.

It didn’t matter whether the corpse of Zhaitan exist or not.

The whole theory was about “Zhaitan” was merely a term created by the other race to describe the most powerful undead dragon. ( <— Er, that’s actually the fact ) There were so many undead dragons and they can grow to become the lieutenants, eventually “Zhaitan” itself.

Just like Kings & Queens of the human, u do find their corpse but no one will say the King is “dead forever”, because some people will takes its place.

It is very logical a hierarchy system exist in any intelligent creature, including the dragon race.

Eluveitie.1290:

Everytime there seems to be someone popping up that Zhaitan is not dead with a new theory.

He IS dead. He has been for months, probably for half a year already.

People were so dissapointed by how it ended that they’re trying to find ways to create a fantasy where Zhaitan is still lurking and a threat.

I just don’t know what to say to people who believe everything some people told u while saying other people who have doubts are in their own fantasy :/ And I already include the word “theory” in the title of this post

The reason I and other people who suggest other theory is because we love the storyline and would want to see what other people think about it, that’s the purpose of open discussion

I guess it was because there were so many twists in gw1 storyline leaded my friend to suggest such theory to the “death” of Zhaitan.

This doesn’t shoot your theory down at all, but I just wanted to mention: the name “Zhaitan” definitely isn’t just a word the races made up. Risen use it all the time, even those who could never have heard the name in life.

i gess zhaitan is aggresiv towords the othere races as he needs to else he cant get an army to get more food.
Zhaitan is most likely a not a rank but a NPC given the nature of the elder dragons and there life spand

astroboy.5431:

You could see there are lots of dragons surrounding Zhaitan during the fight in Arah, though “Zhaitan” was defeated, his minions in Orr and other smaller dragons didn’t disappeared. That’s one proof and everyone knows it.

Just a minor clarification on this – that’s not proof at all. Nothing really indicates that just because an Elder Dragon dies, all of their minions should just drop dead, let alone disappear.

astroboy.5431:

This can be applied to other dragon races such as the icebrood, my friend asked me why the Claw of Jormag “respawned” every now and then, and I answered him because it was just a game. ( Of course !? ) And yet he suggested that there are so many ice dragons to take the place as the lieutenant ( and there are many lieutenants ), and so does the “Jormag” of the ice dragon race.

Your friend is absolutely right in the Claw of Jormag bit, and it was confirmed with the Shatterer. For all three dragon champions in the open world, including Tequatl (which though it sounds like a unique name, it isn’t – it’s hylek for “one in darkness” or something, and “the Sunless” is the hylek name for risen – effectively, Tequatl the Sunless is roughly translated as “Risen in Darkness”), they are replaced by another dragon champion. Claw of Jormag, The Shatterer, and Tequatl the Sunless are merely ranks, not names, unlike Zhaitan or Jormag. It’s like the Eyes of Zhaitan minions – there’s dozens of them.

The dragon champions aren’t respawning, pre-existing ones are just taking their place.

However, there is only one Elder Dragon per force. They are the “makers” of that force.

And the fatal flaw in your friends theory is that fact – the Elder Dragons themselves make the energies that allow corruption into risen, icebrood, etc. With Zhaitan gone, there’s no more new corrupted draconic magic coming. Though the risen are still present, they are slowly being hunted down and they have a limited amount of magic to corrupt with, which is ever reducing as more minions are killed off. At least everything we’ve seen during the personal storyline (particularly the Order of Whispers and Asura storylines) tell us this.

The cycle is rather simple:

Elder Dragon eats magic. Elder Dragon twists magic. Elder Dragon uses twisted magic to twist physical matter. Physical matter that’s twisted become minions. Minions siphon twisted magic from Elder Dragon to create more minions.

Remove the Elder Dragon from the equation, and the minions are siphoning from a limited resource when they corrupt more things. Eventually they run out, as they themselves cannot make more, not even the strongest of dragon champions.

Again, by all indication that we’re told and given, with nothing to support otherwise and we were outright told by developers that certain dragon champions siphoned into their respective Elder Dragon (Drakkar, the Dragonspawn, and the Great Destroyer), but utterly nothing shows that minions themselves can corrupt magic – the closest we get is the Mouth of Zhaitan, which just sends the magic to Zhaitan himself so that doesn’t count.

I didn’t like how zhaitan died but he’s dead and the trophies from arah have that text to just flat out say “he’s dead don’t question it!”. Citing jormag’s tooth is idiotic because 2 reasons.

1. we know it was broke off during a fight and that jormag survived the fight from multiple first hand accounts that were later written down as legends for future generations.

2.it’s not an item with a flavor text saying he’s dead. it’s only a tooth sitting there as a trophy and a test object to find a way to harm jormag and if you can destroy the tooth the same means can work on jormag(the tooth hasn’t been harmed so far by any metal/blade, spell, or norn yet said so by a blacksmith nearby studying the tooth).

There is no way Zhaitan is just a rank of the risen race because there is no risen race. Zhaitan is an elder dragon and the risen are minions created by him/it.

I quite like the idea though that the elder dragons are destructive forces of nature that come in cycles though and that suggests to me that perhaps Zhaitan has just been put back to sleep or in the event that he is dead, whatever force that created him will spit out a replacement during the next cycle.

Alternatively I also wouldn’t mind if they instead explained the creation of the elder dragons as an anomaly of nature or perhaps some force was behind it that we get to fight later on. Yet another way they could deal with it is how the death of a god in god of war 3 was dealt with, each one had a major impact on the world in their absence.

I admit that it took the Pact many effort and sacrifices to take on Zhaitan. But, there is a saying…… if there is no body, you can’t be sure that it is dead!

Something like that……. I still think Zhaitan is not dead, unless we see it’s dead body…… which we didn’t. We only saw it falls into the clouds…….

Even if Zhaitan mysteriously winds up not dead, he’s/its entire power base is gone. The Risen are getting mowed down by the Pact, the 5 (claimable) God temples have been claimed, most (if not all) the Mouths are dead, same goes from the Eyes, and Orr itself has been cleansed of Zhaitan’s corruption.

If it did survive, he can’t be much of a threat now. He’s a lone (undead dragon abomination) duck.

astroboy.5431:

I guess it was because there were so many twists in gw1 storyline leaded my friend to suggest such theory to the “death” of Zhaitan.

Forget about it, it’s Guild Wars game only by its name. Living Story Forever!

While it’s cool to have theories, the fact is that the whole fight was poorly done, just like almost every fight in the game, and there’s no way Anet would want to disappoint 90% of their playerbase by giving us a crappy climax just to show us something cool a year later.

Zaithan is dead or defeated and put back to eternal rest for the next circle..

Zhaitan isn’t refered as “The Zhaitan”. He is called Zhaitan. And why would’t they call all the EDs Zhaitans, then?

“Zhaitan is the name given by dwarven legends to the Elder Dragon of Orr” – not a random champion on an unknown dragon.

And since his defeat, Orr began to heal, and the risen have thinned.

This theory is just… can’t you just take an obvious thing as obvious just once before asking idiot questions?

I thought the “Orr began to heal” thing started with that cleansing ritual done by the salad dude?

Asking questions is never an idiot thing to do. I just don’t think there is any good reason, apart from wishful thinking, to assume that he might still be alive.

Wukunlin.8461:

I thought the “Orr began to heal” thing started with that cleansing ritual done by the salad dude?

Yes, but with Zhaitan still active, he could have undone that easily. The pact dispatched him fast enough to prevent this.

i don’t agree with your “he’s just one of those undead dragons that grew a lot bigger” theory, for a variety of reasons.

i do think he might not be dead for good though. he’s essentially a lich (a really big lich), and even though we’ve spent a lot of effort cutting all his resources, he’s had free reign in orr (the land of the freaking gods) for what, 100 years? 150? he’s pretty soaked up in magic by the time we cut his food supplies.

i don’t think we’ll see from him again though. all that mashing 2 should keep him out cold for another couple thousand years. what i’m curious to see is how the living story team will handle the healing of orr and what happens when you leave a dead elder dragon lying around.

as for the claw of jormag, it’s literally a huge chunk of ice with wings that’s been enhanced with magic to be a dragon. jormag can spawn as many of those as he needs, as long as he has the ice to do so (much like zhaitan just needs a lot of corpses to make some of his larger aberrations)

Khilbron the Lich was also definitely a Lich…. and he’s pretty dead. We even confirmed where his soul is exactly in the Realm of Torment. Just because you’re a Lich, doesn’t mean you can survive being killed. And Khilbron was definitely soaked up on magic. He was a pretty powerful necromancer, and he had the Scepter of Orr as well.

Khilbron was killed via the soul batteries. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to be killed (see Rurik’s dialogue; Joko’s inaibility to be killed by the Order of Whispers generation 1, and The Hunter in the Realm of Torment being unable to be killed).

However, nothing says Zhaitan’s a lich.

I agree that killing Zhaitan was too easy and that he might not be dead, but I have a different reason to believe that.

I believe that as some asura once said, we’re the incarnation of magic. That leads me to believe that that statement is even more valid for the dragons. They are the materialization of the aspects of magic.

I think they form through the millennia, like sedimentary magic stacking together. And they finally awake to consume the very magic they’re made of. That means that even though we could kill the dragons they will awake again at some point, even if we completely destroy their bodies.

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

Celestina.2894:

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

IIRC, the first cycle only managed to put them to sleep, and they knew it. i imagined the dragons eventually might get saciated (at the cost of every living thing ever) and go back to sleep, like a milenar ciesta.

maybe they’re like Tyria’s reset button.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Celestina.2894:

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

IIRC, the first cycle only managed to put them to sleep, and they knew it. i imagined the dragons eventually might get saciated (at the cost of every living thing ever) and go back to sleep, like a milenar ciesta.

maybe they’re like Tyria’s reset button.

Ah right, I forgot about that detail, still I feel it is possible that the key to truly killing a dragon is by somehow removing the magic in it’s body……….now the potential issues of removing a possible “reset button” as you said is another matter entirely.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Celestina.2894:

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

IIRC, the first cycle only managed to put them to sleep, and they knew it. i imagined the dragons eventually might get saciated (at the cost of every living thing ever) and go back to sleep, like a milenar ciesta.

maybe they’re like Tyria’s reset button.

last cycle* we don’t know the results of previous cycles or how many there were sans many before the last.

Starving an Elder Dragon only puts them to sleep, not kill them, otherwise the Elder Dragons would have been killed last cycle thanks solely to the Bloodstone.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Celestina.2894:

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

IIRC, the first cycle only managed to put them to sleep, and they knew it. i imagined the dragons eventually might get saciated (at the cost of every living thing ever) and go back to sleep, like a milenar ciesta.

maybe they’re like Tyria’s reset button.

last cycle* we don’t know the results of previous cycles or how many there were sans many before the last.

Starving an Elder Dragon only puts them to sleep, not kill them, otherwise the Elder Dragons would have been killed last cycle thanks solely to the Bloodstone.

What I don’t get is why the elder races didn’t try to destroy the dragons when they went to sleep.
I mean Kralkatorrik was just out in the open and the dwarfs did fight in the last cycle. Why didn’t they try to kill it?

Ludovicus.7980:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Celestina.2894:

Just a thought: With the new info that Elder Dragons are essentially magic sponges, could that mean the dragons going into hibernation are simply the result of each cycle simply thinking they had killed them?

Perhaps the only way to truly kill a elder dragon is to somehow remove the magic from a dragon’s body itself? “Cleansing” it perhaps?

IIRC, the first cycle only managed to put them to sleep, and they knew it. i imagined the dragons eventually might get saciated (at the cost of every living thing ever) and go back to sleep, like a milenar ciesta.

maybe they’re like Tyria’s reset button.

last cycle* we don’t know the results of previous cycles or how many there were sans many before the last.

Starving an Elder Dragon only puts them to sleep, not kill them, otherwise the Elder Dragons would have been killed last cycle thanks solely to the Bloodstone.

What I don’t get is why the elder races didn’t try to destroy the dragons when they went to sleep.
I mean Kralkatorrik was just out in the open and the dwarfs did fight in the last cycle. Why didn’t they try to kill it?

fear of waking him up in the process?

Ludovicus.7980:

What I don’t get is why the elder races didn’t try to destroy the dragons when they went to sleep.
I mean Kralkatorrik was just out in the open and the dwarfs did fight in the last cycle. Why didn’t they try to kill it?

That’s something I’ve been trying to figure out myself. But Zhaitan’s location seems to have been unknown to them since they let the Six Gods settle right on top of him without any apparent warning – the same could probably be said for Jormag, the DSD, Mordremoth, and Primordus.

But the real reason I believe is the case is that all four remaining races (as the mursaat were in the Mists at this point) all focused heavily on magic, and at least one of them (seers) were on the brink of collapse. Given the story of jotun from Thruln the Lost, if there’s any credence to the loss of magic leading to the jotun downfall, that could have happened shortly after the bloodstone’s creation then. Which would leave Forgotten and Dwarves thriving, and we don’t know how well off they were after they could stop hiding. And again, such a heavy reliance on magic left them with little weapons except pointed sticks basically. They held no true means of fighting the Elder Dragons any more – as far as we know at least – and even if they did still have magic… the Elder Dragons eat that stuff anyways.

Is it possible that the Forgotten were actually attempting something of the sort by releasing Glint from Kralk’s corruption, or at least giving future races a tool with which to combat the Elder Dragons?

It is not impossible. The Forgotten definitely were allied to Glint during Prophecies, but if they had a hand in releasing her from the influence…. I don’t know. But I haven’t read the books, so I’m not sure what the book says about Glint exactly.

This theory is actually a good one, so basically there was a Zhaitan I, now one of Zhaitan babies will become Zhaitan II

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It is not impossible. The Forgotten definitely were allied to Glint during Prophecies, but if they had a hand in releasing her from the influence…. I don’t know. But I haven’t read the books, so I’m not sure what the book says about Glint exactly.

The Forgotten did free Glint from Kralkatorrik’s influence – part of the Arah explorable dungeons (Forgotten path). The question FlamingFoxx was asking, I believe, is if freeing Glint was meant to be a “test” to determine if they could do the same to an Elder Dragon, to hit them while they were sleeping.

SirDrygan.1823:

I admit that it took the Pact many effort and sacrifices to take on Zhaitan. But, there is a saying…… if there is no body, you can’t be sure that it is dead!

Except that the devs said that he’s dead.
He’s dead.
That’s the end of it. I still don’t understand why this is still being discussed. He wasn’t one of a few Zhaitans. Zhaitans don’t regenerate. The is no big Momma Zhaitan that’s going to come out with a giant rolling pin. Zhaitan was individual and the source of all of the Risen corruption. The head is cut, the snake with flounder and die.

Zhaitan is dead.

Technically, Matthew Medina only said he was defeated.

Unless you refer to something other than that post in these forums.

ill help with proof that zhaitan is dead. ive found two pics of the arah map in beta and pic of the old model of zhaitan dead in arah.

Arcalas.9368:

ill help with proof that zhaitan is dead. ive found two pics of the arah map in beta and pic of the old model of zhaitan dead in arah.

Beta maps aren’t canon so you can’t use them as proof. But he’s dead all the same xD, honestly I wish they’d left that in there, would have been so cool to see in game.

As FlamingFoxx said, all that beta stuff means is that it was intended for him to have been killed off. Whether or not that’s the case now is fully up to debate though.

The question is: can the Elder Dragon of Undead rise again as a Risen Elder Dragon of Undead?

Raestloz.7134:

The question is: can the Elder Dragon of Undead rise again as a Risen Elder Dragon of Undead?

Risenception!
Now seriously. I think defeating a dragon is like stopping a tidal wave. You can do the monumental effort to achieve that and accomplish it. But the sea’s still out there. And more will come. You can kill them and get rid of them for a while. But they will return eventually, even if you destroy their bodies to smithereens.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I got pretty conclusive evidence zhaitan is dead.

See enclosed link

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f342/liboempire/gw087-1.jpg

Was that found in Arah explorable somewhere?

No, that’s seen in Arah story, if you can jump through the “insta-kill” area of the map, you’ll hit water and swimming down you can find his corpse. It’s tricky though, and it is not lore.

in arah story

Equilibriator.8741:

in arah story

but you have to glitch through the game to reach it, so it doesn’t count as canon.