Guild Wars 2

I started to wonder about the lore behind Sylvari who became pirates. They obviously do not follow Ventari’s teachings, and are no longer part of the Grove. At the same time they don’t seem to be following the Nightmare Court.

So what’s the deal with them? Are Sylvari capable of forming their own opinions outside of both the Grove and the Nightmare Court?

I think that some Sylvari do opt out of the teachings of Verata and don’t join the Nightmare Court.

There is a discussion between two Sylvari in the grove where a Sylvari male talks about leaving all things Sylvari behind. I can’t remember the conversation verbatim, but a the Sylvari male talks about hating the dream and wanting to leave so he doesn’t have to deal with it. The female tells him the dream is good and he replies that the dream forces itself upon him and in effect is smothering him. She asks where he will go. He doesn’t know but knows he needs to get away.

That is the gist of the conversation. So I would say that they most certainly can form their own opinions out side those two places.

Ventari, not Verata. Verata was a necromancer in GW1 that would experiment on and kill people in order to learn newer and stronger necromantic skills. As a necromancer you were ordered to hunt him and a few others down so that they didn’t take the order down.

The sylvari have many options when it comes to the dream. Many go out in the world and do whatever they want. You have the NC who are evil, and also the Soundless who have cut themselves off from the dream. I think the Sylvari may actually be more free to do whatever they want than most other races just because there aren’t strict social structures trying to tie them down. Just more of a conscience that they can decide to listen to or ignore.

Narcemus.1348:

Ventari, not Verata.

I know who both are. I just wasn’t thinking. LOL Dumb mistake.

jheryn.8390:

There is a discussion between two Sylvari in the grove where a Sylvari male talks about leaving all things Sylvari behind. I can’t remember the conversation verbatim, but a the Sylvari male talks about hating the dream and wanting to leave so he doesn’t have to deal with it. The female tells him the dream is good and he replies that the dream forces itself upon him and in effect is smothering him. She asks where he will go. He doesn’t know but knows he needs to get away.

That might have been the Soundless which does make sense when you think about it.

Maybe some left and didn’t get abducted by the Nightmare Court? Sure they still defy some of the Tablet’s teachings, but their experiences still enrich the Grove if they ever do return to the dream.

Sylvari are just as smart and opinionated as any person who is not sylvari. They can still be connected to the dream without adhering directly to everything that the Ventari Tablet says.
And anyways, being a pirate doesn’t exactly violate Ventari’s teachings. It just depends on what you do as a pirate.

The player (and other sylvari NPCs) certainly don’t follow every teaching. I mean, just look at “All things have a right to grow”: you see sylvari who are part of the dream, Soundless, or Nightmare court, going around and ending lives because of convenience instead of taking them prisoner or teaching them to be better. Seems a rather large violation.

All in all, Ventari’s teachings aren’t law. They are guidelines.

Not all those who join the nightmare seem to be Nightmare Court – Noxia in Snowden Drift, for one. Similarly, as said, not all those who abandon the Ventari teachings embrace the nightmare (though some, like the pirates, likely teeter on the edge).

The “all things have a right to grow” tenet is a complicated one – if you’re in the right place in the Grove at the right time, you can come across a teacher discussing it. One of the subtleties of it is that you are one of the things that has a right to grow, as are your crops, as are predators that need to kill their prey to live. Combined with other tenets, it most definitely allows you to take life when necessary for your own right to grow, or in defence of another’s.

What it seems to be prohibiting is:

1) Destruction of a species you consider a pest or a potential threat simply because it’s a pest or might be a threat in the future. The grubs in the Caledon garden are one example – they annoy the gardeners and the tenet does allow for the grubs to be culled, but probably would not condone large-scale use of pesticides in order to attempt to wipe them out entirely. Similarly, in Cadeyrne’s story, the Firstborn forbid slaying the young krait on the basis that while most krait were indeed likely to grow to become threats, they deserved the opportunity to demonstrate otherwise before being slaughtered out of hand. Both examples would be simplified by exterminating the species in question, but the tenet requires you to wait until the situation is such where another’s right to grow is being significantly impinged upon.

2) Impinging on another’s right to grow beyond what is necessary to fulfill your right to grow, or a third party’s. Hunting for fun would likely be prohibited by the tenet, as would hunting for luxury goods not required for survival. The tendency of the Inquest to pollute the surrounding area through negligence is not required for Inquest members to grow, they do it because they don’t care about the rights of others (particularly nonsapient flora and fauna) and can’t be bothered to dispose of their waste responsibly.

Arguably, the sylvari pirates may not be violating this tenet – if their activities are funding their own survival, they limit their pillaging to what their victims can afford, and do not kill anyone they don’t have to in their raids. However, their victims still have the right to fight back.

And this has been “Religious Teachings with Drax.” Tune in next week for Koda, Blessed are the Balanced.

That is probably the most in-depth look into a GW1 religion I have seen in a long time, although it does make a lot of sense, and was a good read. I just loved, though, how it felt like it was part of a sermon series of some sort :P

Heh. I guess it’s only fitting, since I did that series on the gods for GuildMag. :P

One other thing I was going to mention but forgot was on the question of hearts – there is an implicit assumption with many hearts, especially in beginning zones, that the PC is of the race that the zone belongs to (particularly evident in some of the letters you receive). Thus, you get sylvari doing un-sylvari things while in asura zones, humans doing things they’d probably rather not while in charr zones, and so on. So when it comes to heart quests, sometimes it’s just necessary to accept that sometimes one will require doing something that isn’t really in flavour for your race, whether it’s violating the tenets of the Tablet, helping to destroy your own cultural heritage, or whatever it happens to be.

Agreed. That was a good post.

Bravo drax. I was going to comment about the krait nest…but no need. Now I want a full series from you, as well as a concise yet explanatory “History of Tyria”. I’ve done some hunting in the wiki, but its all spread out everywhere, and sometimes you just dont have the time/energy to go hunting down the lore

The “where life goes, so too should you” tenet can simply mean “experience life”. If that leads them down the path of a pirate, they’re experiencing life and adding it to the dream. While Ventari’s Tablet outlined an ideal for the Sylvari to strive for, the race as a whole is as complex and varied as any other. Like humans, they walk different paths of life but in this case, they’re constantly learning.

They wanted every race do be everywhere and do everything, they didn’t care if it i lore friendly. That’s all.

Same with charr pirates. I se way too many charr pirates, however 99.99% is loyal to their legion until death, and the ones becoming gladiums don’t often leave their lands either. 1-2 is okay, but as i said, there’s too many, and they work with humanswithout problems, which, a charr without affected by the treaty, wouldn’t do, mostly if they are outlaws.

It’s all about filling every kind of roles and organisations with every race to be balanced.

You can’t stereotype all the non-human races like that though. They believe different things, and were raised in a totally different society, but each person is still a unique individual.

Some Sylvari don’t believe in upholding the teaching of Ventari’s Tablet to a ‘T’, but they don’t fall to the Nightmare…

Some Charr aren’t loyal to their warbands or Legions till death…

Some Asura don’t actively pursue knowledge…

And some Norn don’t seek to make a legend about themselves…

Just because they are in the minority, and they aren’t seen much be the players, doesn’t mean they don’t exist in lore.

There are definitely some Sylvari out there that strike me as volatile personalities. I think of Sylvari pirates as Sylvari who get easily bored, and want to experience many different things; so they join whatever group for a while and “try on” different personalities.

We only see Nightmare courtiers, but nothing says that all Nightmare Sylvari are actually from the Court.
I always thought that those pirates could be either Soundless or Nightmare Sylvari who didn’t want to join the Nightmare Court… or even “normal” Sylvari who enjoyed the idea of a pirate’s life without Ventari’s Tablets and stuff.

Izzuan.3704:

Bravo drax. I was going to comment about the krait nest…but no need. Now I want a full series from you, as well as a concise yet explanatory “History of Tyria”. I’ve done some hunting in the wiki, but its all spread out everywhere, and sometimes you just dont have the time/energy to go hunting down the lore

As mentioned, I’ve done a series on the gods for GuildMag, which you can find in the magazines here (as well as the occasional standoff piece in the archives on the main page). Note that most of the stuff I’ve written over there was prior to Guild Wars 2 being released, so some of it is out of date to varying degrees.

I’ve been pretty busy in RL stuff in the last year, but we’re looking to resume publishing issues in the next month or so.

Analysing each of the tenets could make for an interesting project – I can’t guarantee I’ll do so anytime soon, but I’ll add it to the to-do list. A consolidated history of Tyria is something that the Archivist’s Sanctum has been discussing off and on for a while – might well be time for us to get off our collected behinds and get organised. :P

What if in the dream, a Sylvari saw itself as a great pirate captain? Maybe even sitting on the captain’s counsel in Lion’s Arch? Wouldn’t this encourage them to pursue a career in piracy? We see Sylvari who dream of themselves fighting dragons or forging armor and they become warriors and armorsmiths.

You also have to look at the other side of this coin. Pirates, real ones at least, are incredibly democratic. They don’t care where their members come from as long as they can get along with everyone else and prove their worth. They also vote on whom their captain will be. If that captain fails to deliver, he steps down or is impeached and they vote on the next. If the game really followed this rule set then we should see krait, quaggan, skrit, jotun and a lot of other nonplayable races as pirates too.

There is a Quaggan pirate in Timberline Falls. As for the others, Jotun don’t seem to stretch down to any bodies of water with pirates and Krait are too evil to join crews of “lesser” races. Skritt however seem like good candidates to be pirates.