#maguuma jungle

[sariannearies]

Even (especially) Commander need some time alone... being a bit broody.

This pensive pile of leaves and branches is sponsored by ArenaNet <3

[nerdybookahs]

Caledon Forest in Maguuma Jungle

Caledorn Forest in Maguuma Jungle #GuildWars2

[skaald-of-the-hearth-fires]

First of all YES!! There was SO much urgency. They couldn't wait. Trahearne waited as long as he possibly could for Commander to finish up the egg business before going.

Camp Resolve had been attacked just before this and barely survived, and only did because the Commander was there to throw up a signal flare for help. Nobody else was able to reach it. The Pact and Trahearne and Destiny's Edge was almost finished off BEFORE THE PACT FLEET EVEN LAUNCHED.

Trahearne with his knowledge explained how all dragons have an expansion period: Zhaitan claimed Orr and caused the Great Tsunami, Kralkatorrik created the Dragonbrand, Jormag caused the Dragonstorm and sent the norn south, Primordus took the Depths and sent the asura and skritt to the surface.

Trahearne was desperately trying to take down Mordremoth BEFORE it hit that phase (which happens right after waking up), because it was so close to structured society like asura, humans, etc. in Central Tyria that such a thing would be DEVASTATING.

And we DIDN'T move before that phase - the vines WERE in Ascalon already. Fort Salma was destroyed by vines (killing many, Belinda among others). Fort Concordia in TIMBERLINE FALLS was destroyed (not as thoroughly; fewer people died; but Mordremoth's reach was HUGE). Trahearne was envisioning everything from the Tarnished Coast to the Shiverpeaks being fully and thoroughly covered in the Maguuma Jungle within WEEKS, and every day he waited more people dying, more vines popping up, more corruption advancing. He'd seen Orr. He'd seen the Brand. He knew what devastation awaited.

He was unwise to wait as long as he did for the Commander.

Their flaw wasn't in that they were too hasty. The flaw was that we didn't have the TIME to do anything else. We didn't have the time to get the knowledge that would have helped. It was a lose-lose situation. We just didn't have the knowledge, the tools, or the time to prepare anything decent. There was no way we could have taken on Mordremoth successfully. We had nothing and had no way of getting anything.

Its a miracle that even fragments of the Pact survived. It's a miracle that we actually beat the dragon. As awful as it is to say, what happened - Trahearne's sacrifice and all - was the best thing that could have happened to Tyria, and the odds of it were so shockingly slim that Mordremoth's confidence in our failure wasn't just normal villain arrogance. We literally had maybe 0.1 chance of actually defeating Mordremoth before it took over the rest of Tyria.

And we STILL have no idea how we'd defeat it otherwise without hooking someone (who was strong enough to resist) up to Mordremoth so we could fight its mind and killing them after.

The only thing that would've saved us is if we'd stopped Scarlet before she managed to wake Mordy up - and THEN been able to recognize what she'd been trying to do and taking steps to prepare before Mordremoth woke up on its own.

The other dragons had already had their explosive expansion phase, and yeah it'd devastated norn and asura especially, but at least they'd had somewhere to go. This would have made US - every single playable race - the refugees to Elona, instead of the other way around a year or two later. The other dragons, moreover, could WAIT bc they were moving much more slowly at that point and weren't so close to threatening everything.

Rewatching the end of LS2 and the teaser trailer for HoT and man... I gotta say one thing I really like about Trahearne's writing is how he handled the attack on Mordremoth.

Fighting Zhaitan had us carefully build an alliance of different forces, devise a strategy, take our time and be prepared... but Mordremoth made it personal for the sylvari. Did that make him nervous and that's why he decided to rush an entire fleet into unknown territority without even the glimpse of a plan? Almorra (rightfully) points it out in a later release, Trahearne fucked up big time sending everyone (and ultimately himself) to their death.

And I love that narrative. I love this wise, grounded (though occasionally dorky) figure we've had at our side just making that one fatal mistake out of urgency. (& fear?)

And who knows, ultimately we did come out victorious against the elder dragon, so maybe that was the only right decision after all.

[fleetingmirage]

I tried to draw what I imagine Malyck is looking at in the last post.

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

Flourish AU - Dragonheart Pirkko - Durmond Priory

Champion of the Caustic Elder Dragon

"Lasting change isn't gentle. It's harsh, abrasive, and inescapable. Either we'll adapt or we'll die trying."

"A better world starts with deciding what we're prepared to lose."

[the-blazing-light]

Zemzus, Priory Arcanist, Lion's Arch-raised charr, Necromancer and overall just a big Elder Dragon nerd

[sunsrefuge]

I have to know... it's very important

🕸 for Liifa and Quinn

And 🍴for Phoenix and Qlikk

🕸: How are they reacting to spiderweb on them?

Liifa’s calm about it !! he’s checking to make sure there’s no little hitchhikers on him and then just brushing it off whdjwb If there is, he’s gently returning them to whatever he just accidentally cleared the web off of!

Quinn is STRESSED. a Frenzy. She’s the person who just goes ‘AAGH’ and is swiftly wiping at her arms and Complaining !! she wants a shower now :(

🍴: Weirdest thing they've eaten?

Phoenix… You know that hero point in Orr with the unidentified liquid at the bottom of a river?? That. Absolutely. She also ate the toxic bacon in HoT but I feel like drinking the weird jelly liquid is weirder !!!

Qlikk,, hm!! He’s eaten part of a chak before. :) Thought it’d be fun !! in reality it gave him a tummy ache but it did taste “sparkly” !!

[bigsnaff]

I've said this before on my old old deleted blog somewhere I think, but I personally think that (most) of the in-game renders of the elder dragons are not reflective of their actual sizes.

They're constantly likened to natural disasters in and of themselves. Heaps of old concept art of them depicting them dormant and indiscernible from mountains. Kralkatorrik described as a hurricane. Zhaitan literally shoving an entire nation to the surface of the ocean. You could argue that Mordremoth is technically the size the entirety of the Maguuma Jungle itself.

The in-game renders are considerably scaled back versions of the elder dragons -- both because of the limitations of the game itself and because depicting them as anything larger than they're shown isn't really conducive to, uh, lag-free gameplay. I think the only models that really accurately depict their sizes, or at least close to it, is the mostly concealed Primordus in LWS3 and the entire Dragonfall map of Kralkatorrik.

Not that this is something I see argued or anything. But if I'm trying to envision them accurately, then the creature blowing off the bow of the Glory of Tyria when the Pact flies into Arah isn't the modest version of Zhaitan we see in game, but it's a mountain hurling across the sky.

[mithosis]

Haven't posted in a good while, but seeing other folks enjoy talking and making content about their little blorbos inspired me to draw something i wanted to for a long time as well!

I've had this old man for almost a year, but i've never got to draw his true form as a mordrem aside from vague sketches, so he got kreature-fied. Blasts him with my kreature beam

Glow animation, some silly sketches and lore (warning: there is a lot, like seriously, even in vague terms, i probably should've made a separate post, but fuck it we ball) under the cut!

Tumblr scrunched it up, as always, but the gif was worse...

Even old men need to be silly sometimes. Also reworked his smaller "sylvari" form design a little to match the kreature one better

Onto the lore (which i reworked a little as well since his creation)

I am a sucker for characters that perceive themselves as monsters and learn to love themselves again, whether or not they're are actually a monster/cursed/etc (it does add points for sure), and i wanted a character like that, so this old man came along

As of now, Eamhrys is a mordrem minion, champion from the last Dragonrise 10 thousand years ago, though he remembers almost nothing about it now. He was intended as a specialized unit for highly efficient magic consumption both from the environment, magical items and living beings that it then returned to the Elder Dragon himself, much like Mouths of Zhaitan worked in that regard.

This resulted in a vampire-like physicality and abilities, including a nigh-immortality with extremely fast regeneration as long as the minion had enough magical essence. Shapeshifting into a smaller size to fit through vines and branches and plant manipulation was useful in traversing the jungle fast, so he was imbued with that as well. There probably were less successful versions of the same minion, but this one, charged with a huge amount of Mordremoth's magic, stuck around. Energy around the "tendrils" on his form is, in fact, magic — the swirls dull and disappear with its depletion.

As the dragons consumed all the excess magical energy of the world and returned to slumber, so did the minion, for there was no need for it anymore in the state the world was in, the other races safely concealed by Glint.

It rested for a long time, its memories eroding, until the tail end of the druids' residence in Maguuma as humans, some time before their approximate "disappearance" period of 970-1070 AE. Upon waking up because of the disturbances in the jungle, the minion resumed the task it was given, though the will and voice of the sleeping dragon was significantly more subdued this time.

The minion roamed around and consumed as much energy as it could for a number of years, meeting and snacking on different creatures until a fateful encounter with druids, their human forms now shredded to be one with nature. The champion was both curious and drawn in by the magical essence they exuded, and tried to absorb it, but ended up fighting the spirits — it quickly escalated into numerous hostile encounters with them, their primal essence slowly changing something in the minion over time. To this day Eamhrys doesn't know what happened exactly, as most of his memories that far back were mysteriously wiped out, but from that point onward he slowly started to become more self-aware, able to question and doubt the will of his master.

The minion's first venture out of the jungle didn't happen for at least another 10 years, but during that time it's curiosity with other races started to pique as it encountered centaurs, hylek and even some errant human adventurers who ventured too deep into the forest. Although their fate remained the same as other sources of magic, their presence spurred the champion to explore further — and one day it morphed itself into a smaller form of a centaur scout, whose patrol it recently wiped out in the Silverwoods (currently Silverwastes), though still plant-like. It took a couple unsuccessful tries before the disguise was enhanced first by an extremely uncanny, then — a believable illusion, the rudimentary ability to camouflage the minion possessed. Thankfully, the dragon's will waned the further it got from the jungle.

Thus began centuries of wandering Tyria, changing forms between races and creatures, curious to learn, to see, and starting to slowly recognize the role their existence played in the world. They witnessed many devastating and world-altering events along the way, the Sinking of Orr being one of the first — and it kickstarted the mordrem's understanding of the sheer devastation the dragons' presence brought, including their own. However, they were not very sympathetic at the time.

It was only through the very people they hid among, learned from, that their lack of morality began to develop into their calm, compassionate and kind attitude of today, having witnessed other creature's highs and lows, and horrors of losing someone dear.

Eamhrys lived among humans for the longest time among all other races, both from Central Tyria and as far as Elona, always in a disguise — he learned the craft and knowledge preservation from firebrands of old, but only incorporated their fighting style into his arsenal years later, after Mordremoth's inevitable defeat.

He joined the Durmand Priory a couple decades after it was established, driven by the allure of knowledge and longing for connection. He helped rebuild Lion's Arch, the first major city he visited long before, after it flooded as Orr rose again and Zhaitan awoke. He was first in line to visit the Grove once he heard of a mysterious new race of plant people — though he kept a substantial distance for the few weeks he spent observing the newcomers. He was afraid they were like him at the start of his journey, but was pleasantly surprised once he was proven wrong. Inexplicably different to them, mourning the life he might've had if the circumstances were different, he still abandoned his human visage for his "sylvari" one, and adopted his current name for good.

As a member of the Durmand Priory, though having repeated his enrollment a few times, Eamhrys participated in the Pact efforts to kill the Elder Dragon Zhaitan, both conflicted about and understanding of it — his own nature and eventual fate concerned him a little as well.

When the Call of Mordremoth first resounded across the world, all that effort to belong and understand crumbled as the will of the dragon overrode any miniscule resistance he had. He returned to the jungle as a servant, an enemy of the world again, devastating the populace there and, later, the Pact's forces. He was, indeed, not slain in the assault, and as soon as Mordremoth perished, he was free again, though part of the magical surge after the dragon's death was absorbed by him involuntarily.

Eamhrys remembered everything he did, and was mortified. He tried so hard to understand, to belong in such a fascinating world, and in the end his greatest fear was confirmed — he remained the same monster he always was. At least in his opinion.

He never really forgave himself, for he was not the one to do so, but, maybe compulsory or as a habit, he retreated back to his peaceful and compassionate self, now with an air of quiet grief around him, throwing himself at people that needed any help.

Though it didn't change the fact that he ran as far from the Heart of Maguuma as he could, winding back in Elona and finally remembering the ways of firebrands, lore keepers a tyrant tried to erase. He adapted it to fit his own style, fused his plant magic with righteous flames that purged any, who dared threaten the people of this world, and healed allies with a memory of those who fought for it.

He never came back to Durmand Priory, but eventually he met a team of people in the desert after Kralkatorrik's assault that were members of the Order of Whispers. They were professional and inspiring and in need of help, so he tagged along on their mission, familiar with the area. Perhaps they valued his insight or his help enough, but Eamhrys ended up joining their team and their Order, and carried out tasks with them for the foreseeable future, slowly becoming a part of something again.

Thankfully, after the Cycle ended, he had a good vacation.

Aaaand that's it, woah, this was a lot, sorry, and thank you anyone who read this far haha, i love you

[meeeeeeese]

To be fair I didn't have it yet while we were running around so it would have been very spooky if you had spotted it!

But yeah, probably not her finest moment, especially after mordremoth dominated half the pacts sylvari, mind blasting a bug the second you fall to the jungle floor doesn't exactly inspire confidance.

So for the third in my little series on my character's minis, time to talk about Grace's mini.

When mordremoth's assault on the pact fleet destroyed the airship Grace was aboard, she was plunged down a sinkhole into the caverns below the jungle, and dangerously close to a chak hive. It was lucky then, that the first chak she came across was a newborn Gerent, freshly hatched from a glowing blue egg, and uniquely vulnerable to the mental domination of a mesmer.

Being as aggressive as all chak, newborn or otherwise are, the Gerent attacked Grace on sight, it's newborn body already capable of spewing caustic acids. With a spike of magic directed at the hatchling's mind, Grace quickly turned it to her side. At first it was only to stay it's assault on the mesmer, still wounded from the fall, but she quickly found it to be a valuable ally in evading the insectoid menace swarming the tunnels, so she kept it around as a companion throughout her time in Maguuma and beyond.

It's growth seems to have been stunted compared to other's of its kind. Grace keeps it sated with a supply of her own magic but one human mage is a far cry from the raw might of a ley-line. However, that suits her just fine, an adult Gerent would be difficult to keep under control, to say the least.

[the-desert-beast]

Home of The Twilight Tree,

and The Desert Beast himself.

💕 Follows come from @creativebrainrot ! mycarrd !💕

-- Misc. Tags Library --

|> #twilighttreesylvari - all lore/posts about my homebrew subspecies of elonian sylvari. |> #blackwolfbrewery - posts/lore about my EU OCs crew, a criminal syndicate operating out of Lion's Arch's underbelly. |> #ocposting - any and all lore or ocposting ! |> #mysnippets - my creative writing about ocs. |> #myocs / #my art |> #[say chat] - my talking tag |> #friends' ocs / #friends' art - go look at their fucken cool shit!!!! |> #ocfashion |> #gw2treats - stuff ive found out in the game and shared / advice / helpful gw2 related stuff from the community! |> ---

ARTBLOG: @r0selace

-- Character Tags Library --

[Main Five Lore OCs] The Commander: Belial Soulshatter Aurene's Champion: Louis Ebonpromise + Trahearne Lives and stays Marshal of The Pact.

You can find miscellaneous text posts, memes, and various things tagged as nothing more than the characters first name. ex. "maelgwyn" for random posts, vs. "oc: maelgwyn (he/any)" for lore, 110% accurate posts, and more. #[shitpost voice]

Of personal lore note: Sylvari pick their relationships with eachother and are not, "by default," related. Maelgwyn, Rhosyn, Llacheu, Kynwyl and Lynette are a sibling group. Additionally, Faeryl and Cerwyn regard eachother as siblings, as do Morven and Evnyssyen. None of these groups regards any other group as their siblings- They're nothing more than "fellow firstborn." I thought to clarify since this lore is vague ingame and ive seen plenty of reads across the fandom so far. so! thats how it works here :) to avoid confusion.

|> OC: Maelgwyn (He/Any) 01 / 02 | Born precisely one year before the Pale Tree's very first sylvari would wake, Maelgwyn spent more than two decades utterly alone. The Desert Beast never let that stop him, his life has been dramatic and painful make no mistake- But no hunter stops hunting before their prey is limp before them. |> OC: Rhosyn (They/She) 01 / 02 | A cheerful brawler! Friend of the sunspears and guardian of all elonian citizens. Following in her brother's "hometown hero" footsteps she's continued to protect the innocent and aid the lost and abandoned. She still makes time to knock back some beers at her favorite fighting ring. |> OC: Llacheu (They/He) 01 / 02 | A bitter, cynical jackass. Llacheu is very hard to get along with should anyone ever take up the challenge. Personality made of thorns to keep anyone at bay, to test those who try to get close. A self-fulfilling prophecy really. But not even this secluded little brother can escape the legacy he comes from; Spending time in New Kaineng aiding the poor, the desperate, the downtrodden. |> OC: Faeryl (She/Her) 01 / 02 | Sister to the much younger Cerwyn. Faeryl spends her days collecting books and training the saplings of her tree in their ways of life. She mentors young mesmers & twilight dreamers in all sorts of skills. A sweet and loving personality, a great best friend for support, but she's no pushover. In love with her fellow firstborn, Rhosyn. |> OC: Kynwyl (He/Him) 01 / 02 | The heartthrob of his tree's firstborn, Kynwyl has a charming charismatic air about him. Saplings commonly develop crushes on him and/or Faeryl. He mentors saplings in swordsmanship and shapeshifting, as well as diplomacy and morals. His days are well-scheduled but packed with responsibilities; he's more than happy to bare. He spends half his year in Cantha, training, writing, and relaxing. The other half in elona at home. |> OC: Evnyssyen (She/Him) 01 / 02 | A wanderlusted soul who ran off to explore a mere two weeks after waking! She's seen near all of Elona already and has begun hungering to see The Shiverpeaks, The Maguuma Jungle- Oh so much! Perhaps He'll head off to Cantha next and see what that pink firstborn's fussing about! Whilst exploring Elona, she found a very curious soul- another elonian firstborn! (@ commanderthalys' Marek.) |> OC: Morven (It/It's) 01 / 02 | The most stuck up, judgemental, haughty firstborn the tree has to offer. Morven's made a name for it's self with it's innate skill for elementalist magic. It's experiments lead it to a much more Ritualistic style of grandiose magic in combat. It isn't one to be toyed with whether casually or on the battlefield. Indeed, it's the most strict- yet helpful- teacher the tree can offer in the schools of primal magic. |> OC: Cerwyn (He/Him) 01 / 02 | The most reclusive of the entire tree, Cerwyn spends all of his days shapeshifted into his beastial form. Lazing around as a cat in hide-aways only Faeryl knows of. She's the only one he'll always have time and patience for. Cerwyn's only responsibility is to teach growing aged- about 2-3 years old- saplings about their shapeshifting abilties. |> OC: Lynette (She/Her) 01 / 02 | Stuck up though far less than Morven, Lynette has an eye for all the expensive and rare things in the world. To describe her with a single word would be "Brat." She serves as the ranger mentor and trainer of the tree's young ones. Her and her iboga are well known to be fiercely protective of the tree and her saplings, as well as Lynette's own siblings. She uses her unusually short stature against her opponents, using a hit-and-dodge tactic seen in agile poisonous things.

| For brevity, only my nine firstborn ocs are listed here. If you want to browse more, here's my toyhouse !

-- Ships List --

Personal Lore: Maelgwyn x Trahearne Llacheu x Morven Louis x Pyrs Sugyn x Laranthir

With Friends: StrayWyvern/MY BESTIE LUD: Conyvld x Maelgwyn, Lusarim x Kynwyl LynxFrost13 MY BESTIE LYNXLEE: Marek x Evnyssyen SILVESI MY BESTIE SILV: Fedsy x Kynwyl Mabakiiiiii mabiii our beloveddd: Lysyldur x Maelgwyn Sunsrefuge sable <3: Quinn x Maelgwyn, Zayvis x Kynwyl, Hemlock x Iniss, Kirari x Eliana (iirc) The-Dot dottieee: Nephele x Kynwyl <3 Shroomlet sTUUU: NMC!Stiu x NMC!Kynwyl, Soulmates!StiuxKynwyl

#sakurapolycule -- Nephele / Kynwyl / Fedsy / Lusarim / Zayvis !

mastery point divider credit goes to @ soulbeastdragon.

[bluebudgie]

pictured: me yelling "what the fuck sylvari house!"

[fleetingmirage]

I had the dubious urge to practice line drawing, which was (as it tends to be for me) a horrible mistake. You can clearly see the parts I lost patience with and just started painting over, hahaha...ha.

Anyway. The idea for this one is it is right after the fleet of Pact ships, lead by Trahearne, is disabled by Mordremoth's vines. I always enjoyed the idea of a Mordremoth-corrupted Malyck, under the Jungle Dragon's orders, being the one who finds him among the rubble. Our poor Firstborn is alone and disoriented (or maybe Malyck/other Mordrem have picked off any nearby survivors).

Malyck, pulling an injured Trahearne from the battered remains of his ship, tells him with vicious delight how his beloved Pact is vanquished. Not only that, but any survivors have surely abandoned him, after his foolish order to fire into the forests of Mordremoth's domain.

"Your Pact is gone, Marshal. You led them right into the Heart of Maguuma."

Malyck triumphantly presents Trahearne to Mordremoth - certain the Firstborn will soon turn and join them, given his weakened mental state due to his failure to protect the Pact.

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

I offer one (1) sketchdump of Regrowth AU Scarlet/Ceara, with some questionably finalized designs of her “““pet””” that definitely isn’t suspicious at all. Any resemblance to mordrem living or dead is purely coincidental.

[brax-was-here]

My Scarlet Briar AU overall story is a story of Ceara finding her redemption after the events of Living World Season 1. It's a story that takes place over the same eight years as from LW2 to End of Dragons, and has Ceara fighting against part of her own mind, taking her from the deep jungle of Maguuma, to the far northern Shiverpeaks, to the deserts of Elona. The first story of my Scarlet Briar AU titled "Scarlet Briar: From the Ashes" (formerly "The Redemption of Ceara") is set during early LW2.

Characters under the cut

The protagonists:

The Allies:

The Antagonist:

Other characters: