The Magma Wyrms are not, strictly, dragons. They are the canon's clearest example of what dragon-communion costs when undertaken by a mortal who lacked the dragon-cult's older sanction. The Magma Wyrm's Scalesword description records the curse plainly : 'Curved greatsword wielded by Magma Wyrms. The shape resembles a dragon's jaw and is covered in hard scales. It's said these land-bound dragons were once humans heroes who partook in dragon communion, a grave transgression for which they were cursed to crawl the earth upon their bellies, shadows of their former selves.'

What punished them was not the Greater Will but the inheritance itself. Dragon-blood, drunk by a mortal who had not first performed the rites the Bestial Sanctum's priests still teach, transforms the body unevenly : sword-arm hardening into scaled jaw, legs withering into a long body that drags behind, mind retaining enough of the human hero to know what it has lost. Theodorix, named in his magma-incantation as 'the ancient troll warrior whose name lives on as a hero of the War against the Giants,' is the only Magma Wyrm whose pre-curse name the canon preserves. The others, at Mt. Gelmir's volcano, the Lake of Rot's basin, the Gael Tunnel's depth, are anonymous, cooked alive by the magma their human bodies could not have endured.