Guild Wars 2

The observation that both Sylvari and Elder Dragon minions have similar states of shared consciousness is just one among a number that have been used to argue that there is some connection between Sylvari and Elder Dragon. (Regardless, a connection cannot be ruled out. The main antagonist in the Dream is not a member of the Nightmare Court, but an Elder Dragon, possibly Mordremoth. That he features, whether as a memory of the Pale Tree or part of the Dream itself, indicates that he either was or remains a threat to the Sylvari.). This shared state of consciousness is something that only certain beings can participate in, let alone host. The Elder Dragons are each able to host a shared state of consciousness. The Pale Tree, however, does not appear to be the host of the Dream. (What then, is hosting it?) She is as much a participant in the Dream as any Sylvari. It is at this point that we can consider an interesting possibility: An Elder Dragon’s magic is behind the Dream, or rather, behind the Nightmare. The Dragon may not be actively encouraging this employment of his magic, but the reason I suggest that he is behind the entire Dream is due largely to the technology behind the Asura Gates. The Central Transfer Chamber was built atop Primordus. The Asura who built it there could sense the residual magical energy of Primordus. What we should all think about is this: Why did the Asura choose to build atop Primordus, in what for all intents and purposes is a Place Of Power, if not because he would somehow be involved in energy generation for the Asura Gates? The nature of Asura Gate technology is also interesting. It is the most basic and obvious way in which you can keep everything “interconnected”. It is by interconnecting things that you can achieve a shared state of consciousness. Of course, the strength of this state is greatly determined by the frequency with which participants interact. In other words, the interconnectedness established by the Asura Gates is only maintained at the rate at which individuals use it to visit each other. But the point is that a form of interconnectedness has been achieved (on at least a physical level) using Elder Dragon magic. Cheeky much?
In making this point I am attempting to provide you with a way in which to view the Dream. The Dream is like the Asura Gates – it is a form of infrastructure that connects things. But it is not emobdied in engineered devices like Gates. Instead, it is embodied in various forms of life. Plants are the foremost way in which it is embodied – some creatures of higher order too (like the White Stag).

Sylvari don’t have a state of shared consciousness. The Dream is more akin to an alternative reality than a shared consciousness. It is a location that has phantasmal copies of what those tied to it see and hear, little different than the Mists honestly. Technically speaking, the Elder Dragons don’t have a state of shared consciousness either – shared consciousness is a case of a two-way link of both the senses and thoughts, but with the sylvari we only have visions and hearings being transferred while with the Elder Dragons we have knowledge.

What a sylvari knows only gets transferred to the Dream of Dreams in a sight-seeing sense. Their thoughts, their emotions, do not get transferred. With Elder Dragons, with exception of specialized minions (e.g., Eyes and Mouths of Zhaitan), it is only their knowledge – their thoughts. The two are very different when you get past the first layer.

And technically the main antagonist in the Dream is not an Elder Dragon but a vision of an Elder Dragon, specifically Zhaitan if the Pale Tree and Caithe are correct.

Who said anything must be hosting the Dream of Dreams? No one hosts Earth, Tyria, or the Mists after all.

I’m not seeing a connection between the asura gates – teleportation devices – and either the Dream of Dreams or the Elder Dragons’ mental link to their minions. It should be noted however that the magic which seeps out of Elder Dragons when they hibernate appears to be little different than any other magic in the world – the corruptive aspect of the Elder Dragons’ magic seems to be a conscious effort. This mainly coming from an interview with Angel McCoy in which she states that the Elder Dragons balance magic – when awake they consume, when sleeping they expel the whole world’s magic. Ergo, all magic is Elder Dragon magic unless we’re missing something.

The only connection between the dream and gate technology that I know of is that as a sylvari crosses a gate, they lose connection to the dream for just a second. It is one of the dialogues in Lion’s Arch. I don’t know if this is for all sylvari, but it is an interesting thing to note (though I do not know it’s relevance to the topic on hand).

That’s actually not proven fact. It’s just one sylvari’s emotional feeling. IIRC, she says it feels like she’s being separated from the Dream. We don’t know that she actually is.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Their thoughts, their emotions, do not get transferred.

I have to disagree here. I’ve just finished completing the Grove on my alt, and the dialogues are filled with this. One sylvari can -at least at some rate- sense what the other one is feeling. This wouldn’t be possible without the Dream, thus emotions must be transferred and can be sensed by others, or at least by someone whom is closely connected to the first sylvari.

So if all magic is ED’s magic… if we kill all the dragons, will magic in Tyria end?

It not really Elder Dragon magic. It is just all magic has passed through them, at one time or another, in their cycle. They wake up, eat most of the world’s magic, fall asleep once they run out, expel it over time while sleeping, then they wake up to start the cycle over again.

As for what happens if we kill them all… That is still up in the air until we get more information.

Eluveitie.1290:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Their thoughts, their emotions, do not get transferred.

I have to disagree here. I’ve just finished completing the Grove on my alt, and the dialogues are filled with this. One sylvari can -at least at some rate- sense what the other one is feeling. This wouldn’t be possible without the Dream, thus emotions must be transferred and can be sensed by others, or at least by someone whom is closely connected to the first sylvari.

In Edge of Destiny, Caithe feels empathy towards a bear in Lion’s Arch that was in an illegal bear-fighting ring.

I doubt the bear was tied to the Dream of Dreams. It seems a typical racial trait of the sylvari to be slightly empathetic to the creatures around them.