Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty sure we all know the “Fear Not This Night” Song by now; but I’ll include the lyrics in the spoiler for reference, yet could this be more than a mere credits song?
Could “Fear Not This Night” hint towards the struggle of the Sylvari in HoT?

Here’s a few similarities and parallels I noticed.

- Fear not this night, You will not go astray. Though shadows fall, Still the stars find their way
So far, Mordy likes the darkness. His champion was named Shadow of the Dragon rather than a more physical name like “Claw of …” or “Shatterer” and said champion summoned shadow tendrils and Smothering Darknesses. Also, in the Verdant Brink map the Mordrem came out in force at night. These lines seem to suggest that despite the threats of darkness; or the night, the sylvari in question (PC?) will not go astray as in they will keep their mind.

- Awaken from a quiet sleep, Hear the whispering of the wind. Awaken as the silence grows. In a solitude of the night.
This might reference to the Sylvari PC’s awakening. especially if you choose the White Stag story arc as the PC says “I hear my name in the wind” or something like that during the character creation cinematic. The second half could reference to the Pale Tree’s current silence after she was attacked, ignoring when she gave those vision seeds.

-The next couple stanzas seem to reference the obvious spreading of Mordy’s influence and to continue to hold on to Hope, which the Pale Tree constantly tells you in the Zhaitan story.

- Distant sounds of melodies, Calling through the night to your heart . . . Darkness sings a forlorn song, Yet our hope can still rise up
These two stanzas seem to connect to the subtle mind influences Mordy does along with the pleading for help the Pale Reavers did while they were held captive in the Beta story.

The rest seems to pretty much repeat what was mentioned above. So ignoring my long post of theory and speculation I have to ask; what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Are there any lines or events that you think are connected? I can’t wait to hear your opinions!

I agree with you, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there is indeed a connection there.

The lyrics for the song were written by Ree Soesbee herself who was confirmed to have planted seeds of foreshadowing about the Mordremoth/sylvari connection into the early sylvari Personal Story steps (she actually had to work hard to make the hints not too apparent so people wouldn’t catch on the twist too early).

Not only that, but the song is confirmed to be the Pale Tree specifically singing this song to her children, the sylvari, and it plays in the Grove as well as during the pivotal cleansing of Orr with Caladbolg, so that’s yet another dot connecting the lyrics to the sylvari story in particular.

Fear not this night is, as I recall, in universe an actual song.

It is sung by the pale tree. If you didn’t know.

While it will be really cool, I do believe the verses are too vague; it is easy to interpret them one way or another. I’d chalk it up to a case of apophenia.

I’ve always taken the song to be referring to the fight against Zhaitan. Various reasons:

1. The Shadow of the Dragon – which you use to link the song to Mordremoth – was originally used to relate to fighting Zhaitan.
2. Orr is often referred to as a land of darkness and shadow in many ways. When you visit Orr before the Pact’s formation, the story steps have the word darkness in them (A Vision of Darkness and A Light in the Darkness). Orr also has perpetual dark clouds overhead. This also seems to be the main reason that Zhaitan’s considered to have the sphere of Shadow along with Death – there’s nothing else that really relates him to Shadow, beyond the fact that his territory is considered a land of darkness.
3. Zhaitan attacks the PC’s fear in the personal story (Chapter 7, which was temporarily removed but is back now). This relates a lot to the song.
4. As Kalavier said, this song exists in universe, sung by the Pale Tree. It would make far more sense for her to be singing about the current plight, rather than a future one she couldn’t know when it would come.

It’s also possible that the song refers to the plight against the Elder Dragons in general – Zhaitan and Mordremoth aren’t the only ones who utilize darkness. Kralkatorrik blocks out the sun with continuous thunderstorms (known to us as the Brandstorm), and the land he corrupts is constantly darker than all other land, looking like nighttime even during the height of the day.

referring to your post Konig.

I think if one takes only the first chapter of personal story at face value, then yes it could be about zhaitan….but some counter-thoughts.

It’s known that they put hints towards mordremoth into early parts of the sylvari personal story.

- I would say the shadow of the dragon has nothing to do with zhaitan, but is instead mordremoth’s corruption trying to push into the dream even before his full awakening (some sylvari ala scarlet were already starting to be partially corrupted), and the pale tree herself had told her children about mordremoth as well.

Caithe’s wyld hunt was to destroy zhaitan. but who’s to say that the shadow of the dragon in the dream wasn’t a hint that the PC’s sylvari wyld hunt was to overthrow mordremoth?

I like to think that was an entire foreshadowing for the sylvari…in fact each of the dragons, sans Deep sea dragon seem to have a larger pull to each of the races.

Norn to Jormag
Asura to primordus
Charr to kralk,
sylvari to mord.

that’s just my view, anyways.

They added hints to a lot of things in the initial release. Some are blatant, some less so.

The Pale Tree didn’t tell anyone about Mordremoth. That was the whole point of the end of Season 2 – the only people to know of the sylvari’s ties to Mordremoth were Wynne and Caithe (until Scarlet, that is).

As to whether or not the Shadow ever had to do with Zhaitan – well it’s very clearly stated that the PC’s Wyld Hunt was to kill Zhaitan – this is explicitly stated by sylvari PC themselves, and that it’s been re-awakened since the re-emergence of the Shadow of the Dragon, now to kill Mordremoth – again, explicitly stated by the sylvari PC themselves; there’s no doubt that it’ll always be to fight the next active Elder Dragon to me. So if the Shadow of the Dragon was not related to Zhaitan, then the question is: why did the Pale Tree lie?

As to the whole “elder dragon relates to a specific race” – that’s far from truthful. The only cause of relation is due to location, and humans are oddly left with no dragon – yet the sylvari have a ton of story relation – or ‘larger pull’ as you put it – to Zhaitan as well. Aside from the storyline about Kellach, the only real tie between humans and Zhaitan is Orr, but that’s not a real tie to Krytan humans at all.

But then, Zhaitan also has a large story pull to charr even.

And if they ever make tengu playable like they originally considered, then Primordus would be affecting two playable races on large. And if the theory of the Flame Legion’s new appearances are caused by Primordus – that’s three races.

It’s not a very solid argument, IMO, as you can draw ties easily between races and world-affecting beings.