So I was doing an event in a Sylvari area where we had to defend a Sylvari repairing seed turrets. Oddly enough, she was repairing them with a hammer, and it was making clanking noises, as if the turret was made of metal.
That’s when it dawned on me, in a massive epiphany.
The Sylvari are NOT plant people birthed by a massive magical tree.
The truth is that Sylvari are actually super-advanced androids. The Pale Tree is a massive magically-augmented nigh-omniscient computer mainframe/production facility for Sylvari. The Dream is kind of like the Matrix, and is where the Sylvari software is developed and programmed before being uploaded into bodies manufactured with advanced nanotechnology. Look at your Sylvari’s bare back – there are plugs running down their spine, where they were linked to the Pale Tree.
From the wiki:
“The Pale Tree holds the sylvari’s collected knowledge and emotion. The few most important memories for a sylvari make it to the Pale Tree to be added to this pool of experience, typically those with the greatest emotional impact. This knowledge and experience is spun by the Pale Tree into what is known as the Dream of Dreams, a state shared by every sylvari prior to awakening from the tree and continues to weakly link them to the Pale Tree once awake. Through the dream, the Pale Tree instills each sylvari with an inherent sense of nobility, curiosity, and a need to explore. She reminds each to hold to the hero’s path of honor, courage, chivalry and compassion even as they strive for victory over the Elder Dragons.”
All Sylvari are still linked in to a massive wireless network maintained by the Pale Tree, and can access information from this network as the Pale Tree sees fit- essentially a proto-internet, moderated by the computer hosting it. The things that Sylvari experience- events, emotions, and knowledge- are all recorded and uploaded into the information databases of the Pale Tree and used to constantly improve Sylvari programming and make it more efficient. The current Sylvari programs are fully sentient and imitate life almost perfectly, allowing them to feel emotions, and Sylvari culture is influenced by the subtle programming assigned to each Sylvari by the Pale Tree
Either Ronan, the Shining blade member who found the seed, or Ventari, the centaur who inscribed the tablet, come from the future and planned the creation of the Pale Tree. The most likely assumption is Ventari- he was a centaur that wished for peace, but how he came to this state of mind is unexplored; perhaps he is from a war-torn future that he wishes to change? Also, chances are the tablet that he inscribed was actually a piece of highly advanced technology from his time that he implanted into the fledgling tree growing in order to ensure the creation of the Pale Tree mainframe.
The Nightmare Court is similar to the heretic geth in Mass Effect 3 – their programming has been slightly changed (by what, who knows, could be a few bugs in the initial programming stage, etc.) creating a different interpretation of their assigned tasks programmed.
I welcome people to point out (or shoot) any holes in this theory and reqest elaborations on certain aspects I may have missed, and apologize in advance for any minds I have utterly blown. :P
TL;DR The Sylvari are robots, the Pale Tree is a massive computer, and the Dream is the Matrix.