Guild Wars 2

Is Zhaitan really dead for good?

We don’t know. In some interviews he was implied to be dead, but given how lackluster the final battle was I wouldn’t be surprised if they included a fifth path to Arah, where players go to the ruins of that tower and Zhaitan’s lair and check for a pulse.

Pretty sure it has been confirmed that he is dead dead…

All the dev comments I’ve seen on the topic have made a point of saying “defeated”.

I’ve heard rumors that ArenaNet intends to revamp the story mode fight with Zhaitan sometime. When or how I do not know. If I were them, I’d do that as a sneak update to adding a 5th path to explorable to check out Zhaitan’s corpse – which was also hinted at seeing later (the corpse, not the 5th path).

But thus far, all statements about Zhaitan’s state is simply “defeated” – the term “dead” or “killed” is not used outside of the Shard of Zhaitan item. Aside from that item, the closest we get is:

Wjerd Bladeborn: Quiet now, quiet! A toast among the champions: to Marshal Trahearne and the cleansing of Orr!
Famke the Fair: To the end of Zhaitan! The dragon had a good run, but was no match for us!
Pier Darkmountain: No match for the Commander, you mean. To the Dragonslayer!
Fibharr Tgosson: Aye, to the commander, the marshal, and the entire Pact. Drink!

<Character name>: Hiding from the crowds, Trahearne? That won’t do. The world needs to see the Pact Marshal celebrating!
Trahearne: Not hiding, my friend, thinking. Completing my Wyld Hunt lifted a weight from me, but Zhaitan is still a terrible threat.
Trahearne: Now that threat is truly gone, it feels like the sun has finally emerged after a cold, endless night.
Trahearne: I can’t help but wonder…what’s next? Now that we’ve formed this unstoppable alliance and tempered it in battle, where do we take it?
<Character name>: To the next challenge. The next victory. There are more Elder Dragons to confront…and now we know how. We know they can be defeated.
<Character name>: First, we celebrate. We won, Marshal. It would be a crime not to stop and appreciated that.
<Character name>: Come on. There’s an army of people and an ocean of libations waiting. All of Tyria deserves to share this triumph, including you. Join us!

Trahearne: The world owes you a great debt, Commander. As long as I am Marshal of the Pact, I will see that debt honored.
Trahearne: My only regret is that I was not there to see Zhaitan fall. But I shall look forward to the skaalds celebrating your triumph.
Trahearne: Congratulations, Commander. We’ve earned the right to set down our burdens for a time and celebrate.

Trahearne: Zhaitan’s defeat has saved many lives. More importantly, it has restored hope to a desperate world.
Trahearne: The dragons are not stars in the sky. They can be counted. They can be fought. One day, we will kill the last of them. Only then will Tyria be safe.
Trahearne: This is a new beginning for Orr, and for Tyria—a clear sky after a long storm.
Trahearne: This day is ours.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Victory_or_Death#Dialogue

Implication that at the very least, the Pact believe Zhaitan is dead, rather than simply defeated. But they never actually outright state it, just outright state it was defeated and that Zhaitan fell.

Yup! He’s good as dead.

For what it’s worth, back in GW2 beta Zhaitan’s corpse was both visible on the Arah map, and accessible in one of the dungeon paths. You can google search for the images. For whatever reason, they took them out before the game was released.

So while it looks like originally it was intended that Zhaitan was good and dead. Whether they took him out for dungeon design purposes or story “not quite dead” purposes, is anyone’s guess.

iirc, didn’t the description for the Arah tokens before they got folded into the wallet pretty much say “this is a piece of Zhaitan, who is dead”?

It was “A piece of Zhaitan, forever dead.” I believe. Which really only states that the Shard of Zhaitan itself is ‘forever dead’.

I always wondered how that wasn’t harmful to the player at all. If Zhaitan was anything like Glint, we know that its body was probably steeped in magic, possibly corrupted magic as well. Then we have the players bring home handfuls of it home after each dungeon run. It’s a disaster in the making.

I wonder if the Pact gets the fun responsibilities of being Tyria’s magically equivalent of the CDC now…

Well it seems that the exuding of magic being corruptive has to be an active part of the Elder Dragons’ consciousness – just being within the body doesn’t make it corruptive, otherwise the magic exuded during hibernation would be such. So magic within a dragon corpse – at least an Elder Dragon’s corpse – shouldn’t, theoretically, corrupt.

However, those jars in the ossuary of the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance are holding magic from Zhaitan and they’re highly corrupting, even though it seems to a passive exuding…

Edit: But I guess the “forever dead” part indicates that whatever corrupting capabilities the shard had, it’s been annihilated for good, losing all its powers.

I would argue that while the artifacts are radiating corruption “passively,” they were intentionally imbued with corruptive magic. But also ask yourself this: How can an artifact exude magic “actively”?

With artifacts, the result of the magic is based on the intent of the one who imbued said artifact with its magic as well as the one who’s using the artifact – both cases, in the situation of these ossuary jars, are by Zhaitan and his forces. It is not odd in the least that they would exude corruptive magic.

Nothing we know really says that Zhaitan himself was undead (or a “zombie”). He is the Elder Undeath Dragon because he controls undead and the like. Similarly, Kralkatorrik isn’t made of crystal but rather can control such (and turn himself into a sandstorm).

Though if you think about it fully, Zhaitan’s minions are not undead per se. They certainly are reanimated corpses, but so are some of the Icebrood. Zhaitan’s corruption focuses on reanimating corpses but it isn’t limited to such, and elsewhere we see his effects taking:

• immediate decay in newly made minions – even corpses just made turn gray in skin and rotten
• disease spreading amongst plants and living animals that consume Risen corpses or diseased plants (or diseased animals)
• and living beings affected by his corruption become mentally degraded – as if their mental abilities are decaying

One can just as easily call Zhaitan the “Elder Disease Dragon” or “Elder Decay Dragon” as much as he’s called, interchangably, the “Elder Death Dragon” and “Elder Undeath Dragon.”

On a side, we actually do know that they are hostile to each other – though not brought up in-game (yet), their minions under normal circumstances are stated via an interview to be hostile to each other and we’ve known via another interview for a long time that they are no allies to each other. At the moment, at least, they just don’t seem to be actively fighting – the best we get is skirmishes between minions who cross each others’ paths.

And a clarification (or another, rather): The Elder Dragons were not unknown in the past, as the jotun have knowledge of multiple awakenings of the Elder Dragons – which indicate at least two prior to our current awakening cycle.

That’s… not what I was saying at all.

I’m saying that the belief that Zhaitan himself is undead – which is how you opened your post – is an unproven notion. And on top of that, he is as much of an Elder Dragon of undeath as Jormag is. The chances of self-reanimation is rather slim; as possible as it would be for a necromancer to turn his own corpse into a zombie.