Then there is Malyck. He was not inherently evil without being taught by the Pale Tree and Ventari’s Tablet. If those two things really do make the difference then Malyck should have been more like the Nightmare Court than the noble self that was more similar to Sylvari of the Pale Tree. I don’t think that the Nightmare is a corruption of the dream by any dragon, but is a corruption introduced to the dream by Ronan and Ventari.
Ronan and especially Ventari are always mentioned in a good light, with creating the morals that the Sylvari live by. But morals are not completely black and white. While the tablet has the positive laid out, I think that the inherent evil in mankind could have slipped into the lesson as well. Ronan for example, brought the seed back to show his daughter only to find his family massacred. In his despair he planted the seed on their graves and never left the sapling the rest of his life. It could even be from this despair at the loss of Ronan’s child that Ventari wrote the lesson that everything has a right to grow. So it could be these untaught emotions of despair, sadness, anger and others seeped into the dream that would eventually grow into the Nightmare.
In one of the few personal storyline missions that every character will go through, the Pale Tree leads the player and Trahearne through a vision of what could come to pass. During the vision you will come across the members of Destiny’s Edge fighting, unable to come together to save Tyria. With Destiny’s Edge unable to mend its past, Caithe is alone and falls into despair similar to Ronan which Faolain uses to bring Caithe into the Nightmare. So I don’t think a dragon needed to have any effect for the Nightmare to grow.
On to the game design reason for why Sylvari are not minions of a dragon. ArenaNet has constantly said that they never planned to let players play the evil side, that the player would be the hero who saved the day. To this end they did it perfectly, even having an evil faction of each race (Nightmare Court, Inquest, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion/Renegades, and Bandits/Separatists) to contrast the player’s light against their darkness. To this end turning around and saying that the true origin of the Sylvari is actually as minions of an evil Elder Dragon, would ruin that heroic outlook. The Nightmare is a constant threat when everyone thinks Ventari’s Tablet is the way to be. If it is then said that the tablet is lies, tricking a race from its roots, it would weaken the resolve to resist the Nightmare, lead many Sylvari to turn away from the Pale Tree and would, in essence, be making the race fundamentally evil and the opposite of the heroic race they are designed to be. It would be an interesting plot twist, but would ruin Sylvari as a playable race.
Lastly is another lore point and that is their immunity to corruption of the Elder Dragons. A point that is brought up a lot is the Sylvari immunity to being corrupted by Elder Dragons which they say is a feature inherent of dragon minions. One doesn’t find an Icebrood Branded Devourer for instance. That is indeed true, but you also don’t see any Branded Devourer close enough to anything under Jormag’s influence to be corrupted by it. In fact you really don’t see any interaction at all between dragons but more of a reverence of the territory another dragon has taken. So really, we don’t know if Jormag could re-corrupt a Branded Devourer into an Icebrood Devourer as we haven’t seen them mix.
As for the Sylvari’s immunity to the dragons, I personally believe that they might have been engineered that way. Imagine an army that grows on trees, is born fully grown, has knowledge of its predecessors, has a built in desire to combat your enemies and is immune to the effects of said enemies. That is almost too good to be true, and would be the perfect army to have on your side. So what if the Sylvari is not a natural race, but one designed and grown during the last time the Elder Dragons were awake to combat them?
To wrap it all up there were a handful of “what ifs” throughout the article. What If: Sylvari is not a new race, is not a natural but an engineered race, survived by the Wyld Hunt of the Ancient Sylvari who have guarded the seeds to this day, and what if Malyck is the firstborn of his own tree. The Scrying Pool shows us what could be, but the waters ripple, ever changing, ever uncertain. So, on that note, I leave you with one more what if: the Pale Tree’s avatar is a female Sylvari. What if the other tree’s avatar is male?
Matt "Mattsta" Adams
