The Opposite of Prismatic

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

3 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Kralkatorrik specifically mentions how Aurene is greater then him. Being immune to death, being able to take in all the magics within herself and not suffer torment. He even makes the claim that the magic BELONG within her, setting her as fundamentally different then him who is suffering from torment because the magics aren't supposed to be in him.

I agree here, except the certainty that she's immune to death after becoming an Elder Dragon (but that's a different matter).

However, that is still distanced from his dialogue with his Torment about Aurene being the first of his kind. So with the level of nitpickery you usually use against me, that doesn't mean Kralkatorrik means Aurene is the first of her kind because the magic isn't at conflict in her.

And nothing actually says Aurene is the first Elder Dragon where magic is not at conflict within them. We do not know if Zhaitan or Mordremoth were afflicted with Torment, let alone the DSD. It was only confirmed for Kralkatorrik, and very heavily implied with Primordus and Jormag (to the point of being basically confirmed but there is, technically, that 0.01% chance of it not being so).

[Narcemus.1348]

On 1/23/2022 at 5:30 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Aurene's able to absorb magics of other domains, but we've seen other Elder Dragons do that as well, including Mordremoth absorbing Zhaitan's magic which is supposed to be Mordremoth's opposite. The distinction might be that other Elder Dragons simply hoarded magic and converted it to their own type over time, while Aurene seems more inclined to allow it to pass through her and redistribute it back into the mortal world, and may only be holding onto magic of her own domain while keeping the others flowing through the ley line network in an orderly fashion (which would fit the 'prismatic' theme).

I the OP of this topic could have almost been considered complete after this post. As is shown, opposites destroying each other is really only true to Jormag and Primordus. Mordremoth is able to absorb Zhaitan's magic, and though it may be a somewhat volitile combination as seen in the Icebrood abomination, it is feasible and not an automatic cancellation as Jormag and Primordus was. So even if DSD is the opposite of Aurene, it does not mean that they could uniquely destroy each other.

 

I do like the idea that Aurene's opposite is coalescence, though. That theme seems to match the theme of the overarching game as a whole, hopefully leading to a good conclusion.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Aurene represents breaking the old rules(or "hacking" "the All" System), so I believe it doesn't necessarily need have an strict "opposite".

however since kralkatorrik and its end, with the mysterious "mother" talk, it is also indicated that we don't know everything about the "rules" and about the Elder Dragons and their origins.

Edited January 24, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

15 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I agree here, except the certainty that she's immune to death after becoming an Elder Dragon (but that's a different matter).

However, that is still distanced from his dialogue with his Torment about Aurene being the first of his kind. So with the level of nitpickery you usually use against me, that doesn't mean Kralkatorrik means Aurene is the first of her kind because the magic isn't at conflict in her.

And nothing actually says Aurene is the first Elder Dragon where magic is not at conflict within them. We do not know if Zhaitan or Mordremoth were afflicted with Torment, let alone the DSD. It was only confirmed for Kralkatorrik, and very heavily implied with Primordus and Jormag (to the point of being basically confirmed but there is, technically, that 0.01% chance of it not being so).

Well no, its all one giant scene. It isn't distanced from the rest of it at all. Its only dissected if you deliberately ignore the context, and try to take each line is a vacuum, instead of in context. Which you tend to do, so I'm not surprised you are doing it again.

 

Aurene specifically questions in IBS why ALL the Elder Dragons go mad. Not just Kralk, and possibly Jormag, or Primordus. She questions it as a known fact all of them are. And all of the Elder Dragons sans Zhaitan, who we never really got to talk to directly, show signs of deep mental instability. Be it megalomania, psychosis,  literal manifested multiple personality disorder, or in Primordus' case sheer feralism. All of them are deep down bonkers by all human metrics of mental stability.

[draxynnic.3719]

There are hints as to what Zhaitan's might be as well through how Zhaitan tries to bargain with people - his assumption is that people are willing to make any sacrifice to avoid losing something, such that being a horribly transformed zombie enslaved to an Elder Dragon and your loved ones also being zombies (possibly mindless ones) enslaved to an Elder Dragon is better than accepting loss. This assumption implies that Zhaitan himself likely had a fear of loss that reached pathological levels.

 

On the coalescence discussion, there's a degree to which you could say coalescence is what the other Elder Dragons represent. They all concentrated magic into their own domain, and had it coalesce into their own form of magic over time (albeit with some resistance by clashing magic types in the process which had a psychological toll on the ED).

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

There are hints as to what Zhaitan's might be as well through how Zhaitan tries to bargain with people - his assumption is that people are willing to make any sacrifice to avoid losing something, such that being a horribly transformed zombie enslaved to an Elder Dragon and your loved ones also being zombies (possibly mindless ones) enslaved to an Elder Dragon is better than accepting loss. This assumption implies that Zhaitan himself likely had a fear of loss that reached pathological levels.

This makes sense, and easily works given the other dragon's psychological bents.

Besides the pain caused by the magical torment I wouldn't be surprised if the loneliness of their existence was a contributing factor to their mental decline. Many stories involving immortal beings have them suffer long term mental instability because their nature makes them so alien to everything else in the world that they can't connect to it, which almost always leads to an apathetic stance, or outright dismissal, of the value of mortal life.

This could tie into Aurene's connection to mortals, and why its so important in the long term. While sharing her magic with others helps her prevent magical issues, having that connection to mortals means she will have much longer term mental stability even after the Commander, Caithe, and others die. Since she understands the value of mortal life, and is unlikely to start unwillingly corrupting it like the other dragons did.

It would even tie into some of the lines from the first EoD trailer about those who face eternity forgetting what a lifetime means, and the value of a life that ends.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

This makes sense, and easily works given the other dragon's psychological bents.

Besides the pain caused by the magical torment I wouldn't be surprised if the loneliness of their existence was a contributing factor to their mental decline. Many stories involving immortal beings have them suffer long term mental instability because their nature makes them so alien to everything else in the world that they can't connect to it, which almost always leads to an apathetic stance, or outright dismissal, of the value of mortal life.

This could tie into Aurene's connection to mortals, and why its so important in the long term. While sharing her magic with others helps her prevent magical issues, having that connection to mortals means she will have much longer term mental stability even after the Commander, Caithe, and others die. Since she understands the value of mortal life, and is unlikely to start unwillingly corrupting it like the other dragons did.

It would even tie into some of the lines from the first EoD trailer about those who face eternity forgetting what a lifetime means, and the value of a life that ends.

That's a valid observation regarding the trailer - loneliness might be a consideration there. As time passes, Aurene might start choosing other champions... or granting agelessness to her chosen representatives (but said representatives would still have the experience of having been mortal).

 

It's kinda where Glint was coming from - while she was cleansed by the Forgotten ritual, that only gave her the ability to choose, and it was her ability to read the minds of mortals that helped her to develop an appreciation for mortals. Aurene and Kuunavang don't seem to have that ability, so they'd likely need more direct relationships to have the same effect.

[maxwelgm.4315]

I love this discussion so far but unfortunately the points discussed in here make it clear how much Aurene is actually a plot device before being a character. She's going to have no opposite if that's required to carry their vision forward and will correspondingly have one if that's what they want instead - this is not yet properly foreshadowed just as much as Dragon corruptions actually being opposite in pairs is also never confirmed. In itself this wouldn't be a problem but it does mean they can get very inconsistent with such important plot point in any way they may want to.

 

In the end I think Aurene's magical abilities will not be the defining aspect of this story, i.e agree very much with Konig that "first of her kind" is specifically referring to her presumably far more powerful way of bonding to other beings through voluntary sharing of magics. So any kind of "opposition" she comes across up to the climax of her development is going to be some kind of primordial Torment itself, which pushes aside all bonds while simultaneously trying to absorb all beings into a formless, bigger version of itself. Her prismatic magic is just a placeholder metaphor for her true ability as a character to bond to individuals without neglecting or removing their individuality - something amplified to the maximum in the figure of her Champion, and also something which is also a perfect mirror of the Abbaddon/Kormir approaches to their divine magic like previously mentioned.

[SunRoamer.5103]

Well, at the end of the new EoD trailer we see a bunch of shimmery-black energy tendrils sucked into a similarly coloured magic anomaly of sorts, surrounded by massive sheets of Jade and broken bits of what once might have been the Harvest Temple (although I would much rather not see it destroyed so I'm hoping it's not).

So maybe this truly is a "coalescent" dragon?

At the end of the trailer we also see a shot of two of the new Canthan NPCs surrounded by ranks of Jade-Mechs, with a massive dragon face looming behind. This dragon actually looks similar to Aurene due to the sparkly texture, yet it also feels a bit more tech-y and just menacing as kitten.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

2 hours ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

At the end of the trailer we also see a shot of two of the new Canthan NPCs surrounded by ranks of Jade-Mechs, with a massive dragon face looming behind. This dragon actually looks similar to Aurene due to the sparkly texture, yet it also feels a bit more tech-y and just menacing as kitten.

Personally not putting too much on that. It's definitely Aurene's facial structure and skin, but minus the big kitten nose. And the pose is done in a very, very generic "looming threatening face", much like seen on Doom Eternal promotion art of the Khan Makyr's face.

ArenaNet has been doing repeated "Aurene's dangerous" fakeouts throughout Season 4, and this just feels like a continuation of that, using Aurene's face for this generic poster setup as well as using a dragon without revealing the DSD.

[SunRoamer.5103]

On that note, has ANet ever done a promotion where an Elder Dragon was actually showed the way they turned out in game? Zhaitan was usually presented quite differently (apart from the launch trailer, which spoiled his ingame model), Mord looked very different (if we even saw him) and the IBS trailer had a very different look for Jormag (not just because of the angle).

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Not really. Jormag was probably the closest, as ArenaNet always kept the actual look of the Elder Dragons hidden (except the final final teaser trailer with Zhaitan, oddly enough)

[The Greyhawk.9107]

Don't forget how completely different EotN Primordus was from that sad unfinished model we got at the end of IBS.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

22 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Don't forget how completely different EotN Primordus was from that sad unfinished model we got at the end of IBS.

It was really no more unfinished then Mordremoth's was. He too was just a head/neck.

Zhaitan and Kralk only got full body models because they only existed in cutscenes/scripted events, and otherwise were totally inactive during their fights. With Zhaitan just clinging to a pillar, and Kralk being mostly buried under giant pieces of land.

Primordus was just way too big in general. His body would cover a huge part of the world map hes so stupidly large.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[The Greyhawk.9107]

18 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

It was really no more unfinished then Mordremoth's was. He too was just a head/neck.

Zhaitan and Kralk only got full body models because they only existed in cutscenes/scripted events, and otherwise were totally inactive during their fights. With Zhaitan just clinging to a pillar, and Kralk being mostly buried under giant pieces of land.

Primordus was just way too big in general. His body would cover a huge part of the world map hes so stupidly large.

Mordremoth was "just a head and a neck" because he was entirely serpentine.  Virtually anyone who see's him in Dragon's Stand would infer this to be the case, and the renders posted onto the wiki confirm this.  You can't make the same argument about Primordus, he barely even has a neck to connect his stupid fat head to.  And as for him "being too big to make a full model of" yeah, I know, and I think Anet should have known better than to do something so dumb.