Guild Wars 2

“From their limbs sprouted branches, and the blood in their veins was the sap of trees. Then was Ewan and his tribe converted, and became they stewards of nature.”

The previous comes from the Scriptures of Melandru, as found on the official Wiki. To me, this sounds a lot like the Sylvari: It’s a small step from Humans transformed into trees to humanoid trees or plants, the differences simple being attributed to the fact that the Scriptures are ancient (written in 48 BE, so almost fourteen centuries before present-day Tyria) and probably partially metaphorical. What surprises me is how there is, to my knowledge, no mentioning of this in the game itself. While there is a human preacher in Hoelbrak trying to convert Norn, I have never encountered a “Cultist of Ewan,” despite the Sylvari only being in existence for less than 25 years. I would expect at least some priests or devout followers of Melandru to know this passage, and starting to worship these Tree-children as being sent by Melandru herself. Is there perhaps any explanation in the lore why this is not the case, or did the developers simply not think about this possibility?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Village_of_Ewan

^ One of the most disappointing areas in Orr in terms of lore-content (although most Orr is like that… aside from the history scrolls in Shelter Docks, there’s barely anything really big to be learned.)

And my in-universe thesis on the area:

I must say I was both surprised and disheartened at current state of this village. Priory records claim that Ewan’s village was surrounded by lush farmlands from the Cathedral of Verdance to Compass Plaza, effectively making it Orr’s breadbasket. Today they are all but rotten, dialpidated soil, with little (other than the rough edges of the plough lands) to remind the visitor of its former beauty.

My surprise was born of the fact that while this village was named after Ewan, I saw nothing that would imply the events written in Melandru’s scriptures actually took place here. According to the legend, in 48 BE there were still pockets of humans in Tyria denouncing the Six as their gods and punishing the use of magic in their midst. One such tribe under the leadership of a man called Ewan wandered the land, laying waste to nature wherever they camped. The goddess Melandru grew tired of the destruction they’d wrought, and so she cursed Ewan and his tribe: they were turned into trees, charged to protect the land as stewards of nature.

I’m not sure what I was hoping for, but I was excited to see those trees, even corrupted. Their absence from the area leads me to believe this particular event of the scriptures happened elsewhere, and the people of Orr simply named this – once – fertile, flowering area in tribute to Melandru and her deeds.

http://www.guildmag.com/magazine/issue9/orr.htm

“I would expect at least some priests or devout followers of Melandru to know this passage, and starting to worship these Tree-children as being sent by Melandru herself.”

To worship (idolize) the Sylvari for their physical form without regard for their spirituality would be shallow. Sylvani spirituality and morality are tied into the ventari tablet, the pale tree, and the dream of dreams, all of which are alien concepts to a follower of Melandru.

That passage is far more likely to be referring to the Druids (or proto-druids) – a group of human Krytans who (for still unknown reasons) retreated into the Maguuma jungle and, there, turned themselves into treants (and later left those bodies to become spiritual protectors of the jungle). Druids are also rumored to have been followers of Melandru, so it fits.

Nothing about that screams “sylvari” to me, given how sylvari are born from a tree, not transformed humans. And treants are, effectively, mobile trees.

As for why humans don’t worship/revere/idolize sylvari… even if they were sent by Melandru, there’s no way to prove it. And just worshiping humanoid plants for being humanoid plants is as Stooperdale said – shallow. I mean, if that’s the case why don’t they worship treants or the reed stalkers from GW1 which were even more humanoid? Tyria has a long line of mobile and sentient (though not necessarily sapient) plants. Worshiping a new race of them that came to be after the Six Gods left (200 years after in fact), would seem very odd.

Stooperdale.3560:

“I would expect at least some priests or devout followers of Melandru to know this passage, and starting to worship these Tree-children as being sent by Melandru herself.”

To worship (idolize) the Sylvari for their physical form without regard for their spirituality would be shallow. Sylvani spirituality and morality are tied into the ventari tablet, the pale tree, and the dream of dreams, all of which are alien concepts to a follower of Melandru.

If we destroy DR they may finally worship us…. GLORY TO THE TREE!

The Druids/treants and other humanoid mobile plants are excellent points, I had forgotten about those. And you are right that the passage is more fitting as an explanation for Druids. I would still argue however that the Sylvari are more like Humans than other sentient plants, as they are actively engaged in current affairs and generally more open to other races (I also think their physiology resembles Humans more than these other examples’, but that might be personal).

This ties in with my opinion that, from an in-universe Human point of view, the idolization of Sylvari is not in the least shallow. Quite the opposite: I think the complete acceptance of Sylvari spirituality is far more shallow. The Sylvari have only been around for a very short period, and it is likely a large number of people can still recall a time when they weren’t around, even with the staggering rate they have been (re?)producing. During the first encounters with Sylvari, the Humans must have been confused as to the nature of these “things”, and would have tried to incorporate them into what they already knew of the world (in which the Gods still play a role), rather than throw away their beliefs and accept what the Sylvari tell them. Especially since this spirituality is so different from Human thought, I consider it far more likely Humans would turn to their deities to explain how all this came to be.

It certainly does sound like Ewan’s people are turning into something resembling Sylvari in that passage.

I think we originally assumed that Sylvari have humanoid forms b/c of Ronan finding/caring for the seed and the Pale Tree being planted on his family’s grave? But, this can’t be the case b/c of the existence of other Trees with humanoid Sylvari coming from them. They had to have been hardcoded to look human before hand, at the Trees’ point of common origin.

It’d be very interesting if that passage about Ewan was the ultimate origin of the Sylvari race. The Sylvari come from a Pale Tree, yes, but the Trees came from seeds that came from somewhere. They didn’t just spontaneously pop in to existence. If they’re part of the species’ life cycle, they could have been produced by humanoid sylvari in centuries past who came from their own pale trees, who came from humaniod sylvari, etc. Ultimately, tracing back to Ewan’s tribe, which was turned into humanoid sylvari by Melandru.

Also, the naming convention there is interesting b/c Ewan is a celtic name. All Sylvari names also use that same naming scheme.

This is a really interesting catch, Vlupius.

My thoughts were always more along the same opinion, just using the druids vs the tribe. I just could never think of a way for it to have occurred. They WERE in the right region of the world, large seed pods were used as a mechanic in that region. To me, it made sense, but I could come up with a way to explain it.

I really cannot see how that scripture passage is similar to sylvari. Sylvari do not have branches sprouting from their limbs. That’d be a case of branches popping out of the forearm or elbow or shin and whatnot.

Yes, sylvari are the most humanoid, but the scripture passage really sounds like Ewan and his tribe has lost its humanity (physically), becoming more plant-like than human-like.

And @ Alleluia: Though the sylvari do look humanoid, nothing really requires them to have been “hardcoded to look human before hand” – there’s a good deal of humanoid races that likely don’t share origins with humanity. Jotun, ogres, norn, harpies, etc.

And arguably the seeds could have “spontaneously popped into existence” – we already have multiple cases of large trees (Stonewood being one Maguuman species) as well as magical trees (Ancestor Trees and Urgoz), and treants must come from somewhere (as well as the GW1 plant creatures). Who’s to say that sylvari aren’t just an evolutionary step from these other sentient plants? Magic may make it possible for evolution to make leaps and bounds compared to natural evolution as well.

I would probably state that for the world that we see, with the amount of sapient races that we see, to exist, we would most definitely need to use the “magically infused evolution” model. It would make very little sense otherwise how life can restart itself every 10,000 years (or less if Konig is right).

Unless some tales about the Six Gods creating the world isn’t entirely wrong, and they created various races in the world.

But then again, Balthazar wanted humanity to rule the world with a warring fist, and all six gods are getting continuously demoted with “they didn’t really do all that, the humans were wrong.”

Balthazar wanted humanity to rule the world through warfare, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the other gods didn’t create races that would get caught in the crossfire. We already know that at the very least Dwayna didn’t agree with this. And Balthazar was very hot headed in both the literal and the figurative meaning of the word.