By now the connections
between the Sylvari and the Elder Dragons are so numerous, it can hardly be a
coincedence. What is this supposedly, but very likely connection between the
Sylvari and the recently awakend Mordremoth? Can we derive a connection with Guild
Wars 1 lore?
What
follows tries to adress all these questions. FULL CREDITS go to Tamias.7095,
who’s the author of the article below.
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In this thread, I attempt to finally clarify the nature of
the connection between the sylvari and Mordremoth, by drawing parallels between
the last Elder Dragon cycle of awakening and the current one.
Whilst perusing dwarven lore earlier, I made a few idle
observations. The first are pretty inconsequential. I just noticed that in
Guild Wars Eye of the North, the dwarves are given equal significance to the
charr and the newly-introduced races of the asura and norn. And like the asura
and norn, they are given the distinction of having their own theme introduced in
the Eye of the North sountrack, as well as having a much more fleshed out lore
in the story of that game. Had they survived the Destroyers, they probably
would have been a playable race in Guild Wars 2 (or on footing with the
playable races in lore terms, I don’t know how appealing this would be to
players), but as we know, this is not the case – the sylvari took the place of
the fifth playable race.
I got to thinking that it was interesting how just as the
dwarves are transformed into creatures of earth, the newly-planted Pale Tree
began to flourish in Arbor Bay, itself ready to create creatures to fight the
Elder Dragons. I wondered how many other similarities you could draw between
the two species, and as it turns out, it’s quite a few:
-
Both are (now) made of natural materials.
Dwarves are humanoid because that was how they looked before their
Transformation, sylvari are humanoid because…well, reasons unknown.
-
Sylvari were created by the Pale Tree in Arbor
Bay, and the dwarves were forged by the Great Dwarf atop Anvil Rock, according
to their creation myth. The Pale Tree links all sylvari together in their Dream
of Dreams, and although we don’t know much about the post-transformation
dwarves, we know that like the sylvari, they are now linked together by the
collective consciousness called the Great Dwarf. (source)
-
All sylvari feel a duty to fight the dragons,
and some believe that the Pale Tree is Tyria’s way of responding to the threat
of the dragons. Similarly, after the dwarven transformation, all dwarves now
feel strongly compelled to fight the dragons.
-
If you subscribe to the sylvari = dragon minions
theory, then they are both capable of forming mental bonds with dragon
champions (the dwarves with Glint, and the sylvari with Mordremoth) (source)
Again, if you subscribe to the above theory, the fate of
both is inextricably linked to the Elder Dragons. The dwarves lost their
independence and began acting with single purpose in much the same way many
believe the sylvari will.
Now, this isn’t (quite) another “sylvari = dragon minions”
thread. I think something similar may be up, but with subtle (and massively
important) differences. Now, before we can really get started, we need to think
about a more obvious comparison for the dwarves: the Destroyers. If you cast
your mind back to Eye of the North, there are many times that the story tries
to cast the two opposing forces in the light of the other. The Great Dwarf and
the Great Destroyer, for example, are similar in that they are exact opposites
of one another (I think that when the Great Destroyer was first conceived in
Guild Wars Prophecies, it was probably as some evil dwarf god). The dialogue in
this cinematic says it better than I can:
Ogden
Stonehealer: “Yes. Jalis Ironhammer is resolute, but the Destroyers are
infinite, and they act as a single creature.”
Gwen:
“That’s it. What if they ARE a single creature?”
Ogden
Stonehealer: “What do you mean?”
Gwen:
“The Great Dwarf’s power is connected to Jalis’s followers. What if the Great
Destroyer’s mind is connected to its minions.”
And of course, as we know, Gwen turns out to be right. When
the Great Destroyer is killed, the Destroyers lose coordination and the dwarves
are able to pursue them back to where they came from (at least until Primordus
awakens). Now I’m not saying anything as extreme as the dwarves are dragon
minions – just that the magic that allowed the dwarves to defeat the minions of
the dragon is very similar in nature to the magic used by the dragon itself
(where have we seen that before?)
Where, and how, would the dwarves have acquired this magic?
Well, we know from exploring Arah after Zhaitan’s defeat, that in the last
cycle of awakening, each of the “elder races” (dwarves, mursaat, Seers,
Forgotten, jotun) contributed in some way to the fight. Well, all except for
the dwarves, who don’t get a path in that dungeon. What I’m saying is this:
what if we’ve already seen it? The battle between the dwarves and Destroyers
and subsequent Transformation of the Dwarves was foretold in the Tome of the
Rubicon, a document dating back to the last rise of the Elder Dragons. Aside
from the generic fantasy-handwavey prophecy stuff, how did the author(s) know
that such a battle would take place?
(Incidentally, a lot of this stuff begs a comparison between
the elder races and the current ones. If we’re playing that game, I’d say dwarf
= sylvari (obviously), mursaat = asura (the game tries to lead us on this one,
see Arah dialogue, jotun = norn, Forgotten = human (ties to the Six Gods,
spread across the world), and then by elimination Seers = charr. But this is
all fairly irrelevant to the main thrust of the thread).
I hypothesise that the Rite of the Great Dwarf has its
origin in the last Elder Dragon rise. The dwarves’ contribution to the battle
against the dragons last time was a promise, of sorts – that if the dragons
ever rose again, they would use the Hammer of the Great Dwarf, a weapon infused
with the magic that allows the Dragons to control their minions (and we already
know this magic can be harnessed by mortals, see Snaff and the Inquest), to
create a creature equal and opposite to a dragon champion – the Great Dwarf, a
champion of our own. The details got fudged over time, but the gist of it
remained the same: the minions of the Great Destroyer will swarm up from the
bowels of the earth and spread across the world. The battle between the Great
Dwarf and the Great Destroyer is fated to play out once again, and the dwarves
will be forever transformed by this final battle.
If you hadn’t guessed already by now, it’s about here that
the sylvari come in. Does any of the stuff above sound familiar? If you’ve been
keeping up with all the threads proclaiming the sylvari to be dragon minions
and the Pale Tree to be a dragon champion, it should. I would argue that, based
on the example of the dwarves, it is possible to possess the similarities to
dragon minions that sylvari have, and not be dragon minions – rather, almost
the opposite. I would argue that the magic that spawned the Pale Tree is the
same magic we see in the Rite of the Great Dwarf – something very similar to
dragon magic, but used against the dragons. Just as the Great Dwarf and the
Great Destroyer are two sides of the same coin, so too are the sylvari and
Mordremoth.
So what of the Nightmare? And more pertinently, what of
Vorpp’s dialogue in The Dead End: A Study in Scarlet:
Vorpp:
“This is Synergetics Headmaster Omadd’s isolation module. A sylvari named Ceara
went in; Scarlet came out.”
Vorpp:
“I reverse-engineered an image of Ceara’s aura patterns before and after. The
schism is pronounced and dramatic.”
Vorpp:
“Yesss. I remember Professor Omadd. He outsmarted me in several Polymock
tournaments. I’m sure he cheated…but that’s beside the point. He never should
have put Ceara in that cube.”
Player:
“What can you tell me about the cube?”
Vorpp:
“His notes say its purpose was to shut down the mind’s security system and open
it—like opening a door—to welcome in the truths of the Eternal Alchemy. But our
minds are protected for a reason.”
Player:
“When Scarlet looked across the open threshold, she saw things. And something
looked back.”
Vorpp:
“Ceara encountered something that literally broke her mind, but the only things
in there were things she brought.”
Vorpp:
“I surmise she was directly exposed to a part of her own psyche that had been
carefully walled off. Perhaps for her own protection?”
Vorpp:
“We’d need to do far more extensive study of the sylvari Dream before I could
draw any more-detailed conclusions.”
Vorpp:
“What I can conclude now is that she’s preparing to strike. Mark my words:
Scarlet’s next attack is planned and ready.”
Part of the sylvari psyche seems to have been deliberately
walled-off. It’s another leap, but my guess would be that if the magic that
created the sylvari is derived from Elder Dragon magic (probably Mordremoth’s),
then an aspect of that Elder Dragon will inevitably remain as part of the
sylvari. The “walling-off”, then, was a deliberate attempt to prevent that
aspect from surfacing. It could well be exactly the same magic used to liberate
Glint from Kralkatorrik’s control (and might also go part of the way toward
explaining how the dwarven Brotherhood of the Dragon could have a mental
connection with Glint, which is something their successors, the Zephyrites, did
not have).
Now this is a lengthy and broad post, and I can almost
guarantee that some of this is wildly off. But I do firmly believe that it is a
step closer to resolving the problematic question of the true nature of the
sylvari.
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