I’ve noticed a disturbing lack of one semi-crucial piece of information: the elder dragons are nature incarnate; a living blizzard, a walking volcano… and their corruption stands as such. Whereas Zhaitan is death and corrupts death, Primordius burns, Jormag freezes, and Kralkatorrik crystalizes.
This is a common misconception.
ArenaNet loves to compare the Elder Dragons to forces of nature, but it’s just that – comparison. As in the Elder Dragons are similar to a blizzard or volcano or earthquake. That they are just as destructible and amoral, just as inevitable. And it’s true we’ve seen them cause such – Primordus supposedly caused Mount Maelstrom; Jormag’s known to have made a four year-long blizzard when he woke. Kralkatorrik even turned into a sandstorm – temporarily (for mere seconds each time) – but they are not these forces of nature. Jormag is not a living blizzard, etc.
Living flesh can be frozen, and is covered in ice; living flesh burns and smolders; living flesh rots, keeping decayed flesh and bone to remain; living flesh can be crystallized. But what happens when you present such destruction to a plant?
Plants decay and wither in extreme cold, especially frost; plants burn away leaving nothing behind at even the smallest flame; plants decay, and rot into near-dust; plants fail to grow with crystal and rock.
Is it really any question as to why sylvari, with a different bio makeup than all of the other races, react differently to nature’s influences? On the contrary, living flesh does not catch heart rot, does not have worms digging through their roots; any plant-related condition does not affect living flesh the way it does plant matter. By that standard, a living plant elder dragon, with its plant-based corruption, would corrupt plants.
The fault in this argument is that naturally, flesh does not turn into crystal, nor does it turn into ice (icebrood is more than just coated flesh with ice or being frozen – it’s the act of flesh slowly turning into corrupted ice itself); and on top of that, we see that plants in the Dragonbrand are affected no differently than animals and the dirt and rock itself. Jormag’s corruption affects not just living being, but natural ice, water, and the soil and even air. Zhaitan too, affects the soil, plants, water, and air.
A lot of people try to argue the sylvari immunity as “because they are plants – plant tissue reacts differently than animal tissue”. But does animal tissue react the same as rock, water, and air? And we see plant tissue reacting the same as animal tissue. Sylvari don’t react in the same manner to not just animals, but to other plants as well.
Guild Wars 1 had orrians, destroyers, and svanir and glint, relative to their areas that foreshadow GW2’s elder dragons. What of the stalkers on the tarnished coast? What about Ronan finding the pale tree’s seed in a cave on the tarnished coast? The Tarnished Coast, that area in the Maguuma Jungle that would be Mordemoth’s sleeping body, growing a variety of unnatural plants, such as more living plants, the Sylvari.
You do realize that plant creatures – stalkers included – were spread throughout not just the Maguuma Jungle, but Kryta, Ascalon, the Shiverpeaks, Elona, and Cantha. RIght? Stalkers alone reached into Elona.
But there’s no reason to believe they were tied to the Elder Dragons. Similarly, the Orrian undead of GW1 are unrelated to the Risen.
Not sure why you can so confidently pinpoint Mordremoth to the Tarnished Coast, which is a small sliver of an area of the Maguuma Jungle, which is what Mordremoth’s tied to (the full junlge, not the coast).
-more in next post-
