Guild Wars 2

If you rolled a sylvari, you’ve met him, once; if you searched for him subsequently, you’d be hard-pressed to find him: Mender Serimon. Who is this mysterious sylvari?

We have only ever encountered him twice: Once in the sylvari starter instance, “Fighting The Nightmare” and again in the short story, “What Scarlet Saw” He is not a luminary, although he may be a firstborn. He has a two-worded name, like Scarlet Briar, but unlike most of his kin. This name may hint at his role, however. For starters, “Mender” may not be as much a name as a job title. Thus, Mender Serimon’s name may in fact be simply, “Serimon”. If this is the case, Serimon is a “Mender” – synonyms for this title include physician, therapist, curer, shaman, doctor, or medicine man.

This makes sense, especially given that he is first encountered by the player-character (PC) following the latter’s fight against the Nightmare. Serimon tells the PC that “others [were] hurt in the Dream”, implying that not only the PC but others also were adversely affected by their pre-awakening experience. How the PC has been affected is never explored, although there are indications that he/she has had (at least) a troubled sleep. Serimon reports that the PC was calling out in his/her Dream.

In the short story “What Scarlet Saw” Mender Serimon is also present and, as in the case of the PC, reassures Scarlet. (The PC asks Serimon, “Are we safe?” and the latter’s response is designed to convey that they are. Scarlet does not ask Serimon, but he nonetheless reassures Scarlet, stating, “You are safe here“.) This suggests that Scarlet, or rather Ceara as she was then known, may also have been “injured” in her Dream.

At first glance, this might not mean much to you and I must confess that I might be chasing wild geese, but there is someone else who relates that they also were injured when they awoke: Malyck. He states that he “was injured, and…wandered the forest…following the river until the Wardens found [him] and took [him] in”. Malyck did not have a “Mender Serimon” to help him awaken into Tyria. This may be very significant, since Serimon does call on the PC to help the others who were injured fighting the Nightmare. Malyck may be just one sylvari who was injured during that struggle. He states that he was awake for no more than two weeks. Its just possible that he was “displaced” during the struggle. It remains to be determined how much time transpired between the waking of the PC and the “finding” of Malyck. It would be revealing to learn that they both awoke at the same time.

The Direction Of The River
The river down which Malyck traveled appears to run toward the Grove and includes at least one large waterfall, so there is the possibility that Malyck received his injuries navigating hazards such as that, rapids and rocks. Still, the PC does ask Caithe, “Can you tell how this pod got so far from the Pale Tree?” I’m not sure about how much stock we can put in this question. Caithe considers it the wrong one to ask; she is far more experienced (than the PC) as a tracker, so her assessment is probably more accurate, although even that may not be entirely true: Malyck may not have come from another Tree as much as another seed.

The Cave
Malyck makes mention of a cave near the place at which he awoke. This may be the infamous cave into which Ronan ventured when he pocketed the Pale Tree’s seed. The only cave system within Venlin Vale that Malyck could be referring to is the Skrittsburgh Tunnels. The question then becomes, “How long have the Skritt occupied this cave system?” It is unlikely that they have always dwelt as closely to the surface as they do now. If you proceed into the depths of the system you encounter destroyers, suggesting that the Skritt of the tunnels have been forced upward into the topmost portion of the caves. Hence, it is likely that the current state of the caves is a recent development. For now, the cave system remains a very likely candidate for that from which Ronan retrieved the seed of the Pale Tree.
If this is the case, one explanation could be that the pod in which Malyck grew may have been “harvested” by Skritt in search of “shinies”, stolen by the Inquest and accidentally dropped en route to the nearby Inquest “Invariant Base”. The pods of the Pale Tree are a luminescent blue and I’m sure that, given half the chance, Skritt would start harvesting them too. Likewise, the pods of the Nightmare Tower are a luminescent yellow/green. In other words, the pods probably qualify to the Skritt as “shinies”. Having lost the pod to an overly aggressive Skritt resistance, the Inquest may have sent word to their Nightmare Court allies.

A Different Dream
In this instance Amaranda states that Malyck is “the seed”. This may mean that the seeds that Ronan found were meant to grow only one sylvari each, but that in the case of the Pale Tree, some magic enhanced the seed’s growth, leading to the development of a plant capable of reproducing more sylvari.

For now though, we have no solid answers.

Menders are basically the sylvari form of doctors. There’d be no need to theorize that Mender Serimon’s name is anything but “Serimon” especially since all sylvari names are one word. What a Mender is, is actually clarified in detail by Mender Aviala within Astorea, just north of the Black Lion traders (see first attachment).

Suffice it to say, however, you apparently didn’t look well enough in Village of Astorea, for he is where you awaken as a sylvari (see second attachment). Thus your theorycrafting is rather moot. Mechanically, you could not have that dialogue at the end of the tutorial which is after the loading screen, without the NPC being present in some form. To have the NPC in the cinematic but not present would mean the NPC is within the walls/floor (a trick done in GW1 during the BMP missions and the HotN scrying pool missions).

Nonetheless, as to Ceara being injured… I doubt that is so. There’s no recognition of such in the short story and Serimon overlooks the newly awakened sylvari – saying “you are safe here” is a means of reassurance to the newly awakened, as they are (sometimes, perhaps always) suddenly taken from the Dream of Dreams. They would naturally be disorientated and could even be in shock from the experience – you would approach such people with care, so as to avoid them panicking.

Oh, and as to Malyck coming from another tree – that’s basically outright stated as the case, rather than Malyck coming from the Pale Tree (the river actually does not head towards the Pale Tree but rather away from it, as down south it heads west, rather than east), nor a seed. Amaranda speaks in metaphors the entire time so taking her word literally is immensely shaky ground.

And the cave Malyck mentions is Skrittsburg, as revealed in the personal story going with Caithe – specifically the southeast entrance to Skrittsburg. It is not in reference to the cave Ronan found, given that Malyck awoke near Skrittsburg, and not some cave of always-and-still unknown location.