Guild Wars 2

In HoT it’s pretty much a given that many Sylvari have been corrupted by Mordremoth to form the ‘Mordrem Court’. In threads ive seen a lot of people seem to assume that this new Mordrem Court is a direct continuation of the Nightmare Court, and that the Nightmare Court would serve Mordremoth happily. But I always thought the Nightmare Court would resist Mordremoth just as much as normal Sylvari would -I thought the NC was made because those Sylvari who joined it wanted to be allowed more free will, as the Pale Tree and the Dream was only good, and rejected any negativity. Therefore the Nightmare was made to try and ‘balance’ out the Dream.

So when Mordremoth appeared, wouldn’t the NC try to resist him as well? Since he can be seen as the polar opposite of the Pale Tree and the NC seem to want Sylvari to be a balanced race.

So… what are your opinions loremasters? Do my ramblings have any credibility? XD

I am not a loremaster and know little of their ways, but it seems to me the Nightmare Court would be inclined to resist Mordremoth, considering that a big part of why the Court came into being was because their founder, Cadeyrn, felt they needed to be free of all constraints (Ventari’s Tablet in particular) to defeat the Elder Dragons. There’s not much that’s more constraining than being a dragon minion.

Since Faolain is in charge now, though, all bets are off.

Also, there could be lingering Scarlet contamination, influencing them to form bizarre and unlikely alliances. (That was a joke. Almost.)

I think it would be interesting to see a split in the Nightmare Court, perhaps with those opposed to being minions following Cadeyrn, while those who are evil just for the sake of being evil would stick with Faolain.

The thought process here is that the Nightmare itself, the concept the Court embraces, has long been known to have a supernatural corrupting effect well beyond some mere dissident philosophy. It twists a sylvari’s mindset dramatically, it’s irreversible, and it can be forced upon unwilling victims. All of these things are parallels to dragon corruption, and taken together, we don’t know of anything else like it but that. Even the Inquest thought so- Nightmare Court creatures are mixed in with more usual minions in their main dragon energy lab.

So, TL;DR: The thought isn’t that the Nightmare Court would be more vulnerable to Mordremoth, but that they are already pre-corrupted. There’s still room for them to schism, but it’d be along the lines of those who’ve embraced Nightmare, and the theoretical group that is just along for Caderyn’s founding philosophies (Gavin being the only evidence that such a thing might exist).

What Ogden says was “But your people’s concept of nightmare and Dream is simple. Too black and white, too unsophisticated to explain the changes affecting some of you.” That doesn’t really say what’s actually right, just that the sylvari’s current belief is wrong.

While we’re on the topic of personal speculation, mine is this: that there are two Nightmares, the philosophical concept opposed to Ventari’s Tablet and embracing what it means to be ‘true sylvari’, and the corrupting force that twists minds and perverts past loyalties. The former, I believe, is just an abstract concept founded on Cadeyrn’s mistaken worldview. He took the Ventari tablet at surface value as just words written down by a centaur, and didn’t consider that there might be larger repercussions to reaching for the sylvari’s true roots to counter it- now that we have a vague idea of what those roots actually are, it’s easy to picture how his pursuit of the first Nightmare led him to the second, the one that acts like, and I believe is, dragon corruption. I don’t know why Mordremoth wasn’t working through the Court initially, but it could be that something about Scarlet’s circumstances, or that the Court is still connected to the Dream, or a combination thereof prevented them from filling Scarlet’s role. As for why they aren’t like Aerin, I suspect that they are. We haven’t seen much of the Court recently, remember- all we know for sure is that the main Court hosted one of Scarlet’s bases, an offshoot group worked directly for her, and their creatures were fighting alongside Aerin and the first Mordrem tendrils in Dry Top. This is baseless beyond the fact that we know they’ll fight the Pact alongside Mordrem in the near future, but I think the Court has succumbed and been called off into the jungle.

The only large hole in my guess is the knowledge bit. The exact mechanism isn’t clear, but Zhaitan, and debatably Kralkatorrik, did seem to feed that information into their minions. Maybe Mordremoth works differently, maybe dragons don’t do that while they’re asleep, maybe being still plugged into the Dream is interfering with the upload, or maybe I’m just wrong. We’ll see.

It’s also worth noting that Wynne was deathly afraid not just of what would happen if the secret got out in general, but specifically what Faolain would do with it, describing how Faolain is only out for power.

Whether justified or not, for Faolain to form an alliance with Mordremoth would be a way for her to make a big jump in power – and the revelation means that she knows there’s a good chance that she’d be able to pull off such a defection and have a decent chance of remaining herself as a champion rather than just food for the dragon. While Scarlet was bad enough, keep in mind that at some level she was still resisting Mordremoth for most if not all of the way – it’s entirely likely that Faolain would have gone willingly, bringing Mordremoth to wakefulness earlier and in greater strength.

And if prejudice against sylvari does go into full swing, I can see that pushing a lot of sylvari into the Nightmare Court because that seems the best bet for protection against the aggression of other races.

Whether the Nightmare Court could be mentally and spiritually dominated by Mordremoth depended on the origin of the dream of dreams. There are two counter points. 1) Dream of Dreams originate from Mordremoth and hence Mordremoth dominated hive minds. In this case then Nightmare Court will definitely go over to Mordremoth. 2) Dream of Dreams originate ‘from beyond the mist’. In this case then Dream of Dreams does offer protection to all sylvari as in both pale tree sylvari and NC sylvari. Since if speculation holds true that NC sylvari do participate in the dream of dreams only if it’s only the salvage and wild murderous aspect of the dream of dreams, nonetheless it would still be protection from Modremoth. Psychologically it would be a opposition of NC dream of dreams identity to that of Mordremoth one hive mind identity like Zhaitan’s risen one hive mind.

In some ways Wynne is different from other sylvari in that she was the first born of all. She was alone and no body was around to support her in her birth dream and birthing. So she could have over reacted to her first dragon vision or she could have been more vulnerable having less protection than other sylvari that came after.

If it is true that sylvari creation did germinated with a little of human input in the form of human DNA/soul/flesh then it does make sense that the dragon vision represented Zhaitan as he was still alive at the time and Mordremoth was not. However as sylvari are mostly plant the same vision can also represent Mordremoth now as Zhaitan is dead and Mordremoth is alive. So dependent on time both situations were true respectively in their own stage in the plot.

In all honesty, I think Faolain, while is an opportunist who will use this revelation to advance the Nightmare Court’s clout among the Sylvari. I do not personally think she wants the Sylvari to be under the dominion of the Mordremoth any more than she wants the Sylvari to be under the dominion of the Pale Tree’s code of ethics.

She has been a fairly large proponent of Sylvari independence. While she may use the fact that they were meant to be Dragon Minions as a proof that the Nightmare Court is closer attuned to the natural predisposition of ‘Ends justify the means’ and the overall advancing of SM in Sylvari culture… she seems to proud and willful to want to willingly subject herself to another beings will as opposed to another.

I genuinely foresee there being moments in Heart of Thorns where we will be forced to work alongside Faolain, and probably help the Nightmare Court in some stereotypical fashion where ‘the greater good demands we work together, only to have them use it to further themselves in the process’ that Anet seems to enjoy (cough Joko cough cough). I make this theory on the basis that I think the Nightmare Court will be more prone to Corruption than other Sylvari, and that Faolain will be loathe to lose control over her precious Nightmare Court to some upstart dragon who wants to hog the power all to himself.

Alternatively, Faolain will be this great big Corrupted Boss we all fight alongside Caithe, ending with Faolain’s death and Caithe finally burying that skeleton that’s been rattling about in her closet all this time.

Be nice if we have to work with the NC, only for Caithe and the Wardens to kill loads of them the second we finished. Would be interesting to see a darker side to the Pale Tree itself.

@Ratphink: It’s possible, but keep in mind that the Nightmare Court rejected the Tablet as something that corrupted the original nature of sylvari. Now they know their origins… they may see nothing wrong with returning to their creator, as long as they have a reasonable expectation that they won’t have their individuality destroyed in the process. Ventari’s Tablet was something alien, while now they know that serving Mordremoth was what they were made to do and what their inner nature is all about. (Nevermind that the Tablet may not have had much to do with the Pale Tree’s independence.)

Faolain does like to be in charge, but she may well feel that being Mordremoth’s champion is still a better bet than being the leader of a relatively minor independent faction about to be squeezed between Mordremoth and the forces opposing Mordremoth.

We’ve already seen the darker side of the Pale Tree. Caithe is one cold-hearted… uh… plant. Seriously, if the story didn’t require me to be the goody two shoes, I would have killed her in chapter 2 already.

Mental Paradox.3845:

Caithe is one cold-hearted… uh…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch

All my sylvari characters are more troubled by her than all of the NC put together.

If Caithe believes the NC has no redemption, she sure has a malleable opinion; she believes Faolain can get back to the right side of the tracks.
She even has a book at home on how to make long-distance relationships work.

Not kidding.

Ratphink.4751:

……

Alternatively, Faolain will be this great big Corrupted Boss we all fight alongside Caithe, ending with Faolain’s death and Caithe finally burying that skeleton that’s been rattling about in her closet all this time.

That sounded like a repeat of Twilight Arbor mid boss fight. There she can changed in to a giant man eating spider with a large mob of spiderlings. Errmm…if any thing her looks in that would indicate an Abaddon influence who also exhibited a spidery insect appearance all those ages ago.

Rhaegar.1203:

She even has a book at home on how to make long-distance relationships work.

Not kidding.

I thought that book was more about repairing the relationship of Destiny’s Edge, not Faolain.

Usually books like that are intended for romantic relationships… are they not?

Undoubtedly, some in the Nightmare Court. would embrace Mordremoth. But not necessarily all. Personally, I would love to see a scism happen within the Court As has been pointed out, the Court was founded because some sylvari felt their lives were being too constrained and rebelled. I can easily imagine some of the Court basically saying “Oh, hell no! We didn’t give up being slaves to Ventari just to become slaves to a Dragon!”

Imagine encountering this splinter group and becoming de-facto allies against Mordremoth – “enemy of my enemy” type situation. Of course, this does not mean any of the Court becoming “good”, only finding common ground against a more pressing threat. So much potential for good story there.

We have to remember, it’s certain the Court does NOT know about sylvari connection to Mordremoth. As Caithe points out at the end of Season 2, if the Court had known they would have used the knowledge. But how well individuals with the Court take this knowledge once it does come out… we’ll have to wait and see.

So Caithe has given up on Faolain? Interesting…

Logically, yes. Emotionally, I’m not so sure the connection is broken- during TA, she’s determined to find some sort of resolution but is vague as to what form it’ll take, and proves very vulnerable to Faolain’s emotional manipulations. In A Light In the Darkness, too, (by the level=time elapsed model, fairly shortly after TA) we see in the Dream that in her despair about other things she’s entertaining the notion of going to Nightmare herself to be together again. Rational Caithe knows it’s too late for Faolain, but Impulsive Caithe doesn’t seem to care.

Also, the Vision of the Pale Tree (Where Traherne finds inspiration) shows that Caithe succumbs to the Nightmare for Faolain. However, that is only a possible future, one that is rendered noncannon due to the PC reuniting DE.

Mental Paradox.3845:

We’ve already seen the darker side of the Pale Tree. Caithe is one cold-hearted… uh… plant. Seriously, if the story didn’t require me to be the goody two shoes, I would have killed her in chapter 2 already.

You don’t like her because she kills people without any sign of remorse? A bit ironic since the PC kinda does the same as well. I know I lost count of how many people my characters killed all throughout the PS and LS simply because they were on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Though, as Shiren said, her views regarding the NC are just about justified now since she already knew of Mordremoth and its connection to the Sylvari and possibly the Nightmare. People being anger at her now for killing a NC member would be like being mad at Logan for possibly killing Kellach. They are already gone by that point.

I think it’s interesting that the most likely sylvari candidates of Mord’s corruption (Scarlet and Aerin) were both soundless instead of Nightmare Court. Still, I think some connection between the NC and Mord is quite likely. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

Blindly obeying someone goes against everything they stand for, and they would need to be complete hypocrites that care for nothing but causing suffering to do so.

I’m willing to be all my ecto’s, tier six mats and my exotics that we’ll have to kill a lot of them before we get to the dragon

The trailer showed Pact members fighting Nightmare Court alongside Mordrem, along with Faolain stabbing one through with a Nightmare Glaive. In addition to that, the presumed Nightmare Court members (and Faolain) had red eyes/glow and vine like growth on them similar to some Mordrem creatures.

It would seem that the Nightmare is probably a subtle lingering form of Mordremoth’s corruption, that has to be taken in willingly or forced on the target by others first.

If it is different from Mordremoth’s corruption/control, it certainly doesn’t seem to have done Faolain (or the other courtiers) any good for resisting the dragon, and possibly rendered them more vulnerable, like the Soundless.

From the way I see the Nightmare Court, when they become consumed by Nightmare, their mindset becomes darkened but at the same time, they still retain a sense of individuality.

The trailer does imply that Faolain may ally with us in the defeat of the mordrem, but I am still curious as to why she would do such a thing. What does she hope to gain from this?

Malkavian.4516:

The trailer does imply that Faolain may ally with us in the defeat of the mordrem, but I am still curious as to why she would do such a thing. What does she hope to gain from this?

Really? When I saw her impaling what seemed to be a Pact soldier with a spear, I kinda though it implied bad things.

I can’t be sure, but I think in that sequence that the Priory member, and the Vigil crusader that gets cut down, are both sylvari. The one has pointy ears, and the other’s eyes glow white.

It would be interesting if there was indeed a schism of some sort within the Nightmare Court, and we’d see Faolain’s faction siding with us against Mordremoth in an “enemy mine” situation while some NC openly side with Mordremoth. Since Twilight Arbor, we’ve witnessed the Nightmare Court splitting into squabbling factions (as seen on the explorable paths as well as the Toxic Courtiers at the Tower of Nightmares who were apparently yet another splinter faction) while Faolain fled from the scene and has yet to show her face again. She might be terribly annoyed having lost control over her sizable “army” due to the Commander forcing her to retreat and ruining her chance at luring Caithe to her side, and now this whole Mordremoth business will make things even more dire for sylvari as a whole.

We’ve already seen rather interesting and differing philosophies among the Courtiers and not just Faolain in the Personal Story, so developing such a schism between these subgroups further could be an interesting route for the NC story to take in HoT. On the one hand we had the likes of Gavin and Cadeyrn (depending on how canonical his depiction in the Dream and Nightmare article still is after the Newly Awakened introduced the plot point about him and Faolain being in cahoots even before NC founding) who were the more honourable and almost anti-villain sort of people. Then we had jerks like Sariel and Bercilak who were more than willing to kick a few dozen puppies and cause mayhem just because. And we had the likes of the Knight of Embers somewhere in between who could be downright cruel but still believed in their duty to see their “Dark Hunt” to its end no matter the cost. From what the game seems to present us, “noble/sympathetic villain” types like Gavin appear to be a minority within NC nowadays, and most NC are simply puppy-kicking evildoers, enjoying every moment of their twisted existence while causing misery to others, including their own faction, to gain a position as top dog within their organization.

Wynne said that all Faolain cares about is power, and I can’t see Faolain ever accepting serving a dragon master when that means she’d always have to answer to someone greater than herself. What I could see happening is that we’re forced into this alliance out of necessity and because of Faolain’s intel, magic or whatever else that could help us reach our goals, and it’d be tense teamwork at best. And what if Faolain learns of the plan to use Glint’s baby to replace Mordremoth as a new Elder Dragon once the latter is slain (assuming that’s going to happen at the end of HoT)? She might try to arrange events so that when that crucial magic absorbing moment comes, she’d stab us and the baby in the back and attempt to absorb Mordy’s power into herself instead, thus becoming this god-like being and fulfilling her life-long dreams of obtaining and keeping power. Not only would she be able to create minions who are utterly loyal to her over time in her “immortal” body (I’d assume that as an Elder Dragon equivalent her body would be ageless and she’d only die if slain), she could boost her already considerable mesmer powers with Mordy’s affiliation with the “Mind” control sphere and thus manipulate Caithe into falling madly in love with her. That way she’d gain both unlimited power and Caithe all for herself, killing two birds with one stone, and she could use this newfound power to direct the sylvari to their “destiny”…under her guidance, of course.

In any case, whatever happens, I hope that before we confront Faolain for the last time (with Caithe), we’ll get to learn a bit more about their history, mainly their travels together before the Newly Awakened instance and them encountering the darkness in Orr which drew Faolain in (assuming that story is still canon and not malleable in lore). I’d really like to see a less twisted Faolain in flashbacks even if only once, hopefully with Caithe-like hair, showing us the person Caithe originally fell in love with because we didn’t really get a good glimpse of that kind of person during the Caithe flashbacks in “Seeds of Truth”. But maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part, and Faolain was simply a bad apple from the get go…

Shiren.9532:

Erukk.1408:

Malkavian.4516:

The trailer does imply that Faolain may ally with us in the defeat of the mordrem, but I am still curious as to why she would do such a thing. What does she hope to gain from this?

Really? When I saw her impaling what seemed to be a Pact soldier with a spear, I kinda though it implied bad things.

If the Pact turn on all sylvari Faolain (which the demo story seems to indicate won’t happen, at least to no great extent) I can see Faolain and the Nightmare Court coming to the aid of former Pact sylvari that didn’t align with Mordremoth. If the Nightmare Court are a third party (not Dreamers, not serving Mordremoth), the Pact abandoning innocent sylvari is a great opportunity for the Nightmare Court to step in, defend their people and bring them on side.

Going through Crucible of Eternity, everything in there is a confirmed Elder Dragon minion/creature except for the Nightmare Husks. Knowing what we know now (that sylvari are meant to serve Mordremoth) it seems very difficult argue that the nightmare isn’t Mordremoth’s corruption.

My biggest reason for not believing (yet) that the nightmare is Mordremoth’s corruption is that the truth about the sylvari’s origins was kept a secret until now. If all Nightmare Court knew that a) Mordremoth existed and b) that sylvari were meant to serve it, why would they keep it a secret up till now? As Wynne says, if Faolain knew the truth she would use it against the Pale Tree (at the time the Nightmare Court hadn’t been founded, so it is possible that Faolin knowing the truth led to the founding of the Nightmare Court – the hiccup is that Cadeyrn founds the court, not Faolain).

If Scarlet was fighting off Mordremoth influence in her mind and she knew the Nightmare Court were serving Mordremoth, why would she include them in the Toxic Alliance? Why wouldn’t the Nightmare Court either capture Scarlet or completely turn her to Mordremoth’s servant? Why wouldn’t the Nightmare Court throw 100% support behind Scarlet if she was doing Mordremoth’s bidding?

It’s not believable to me that the Nightmare Court already serve Mordremoth and somehow the dragon is not once mentioned nor is the truth of sylvari, not until Season 2.

My guess is that the Nightmare Court does not know (at least not yet) about where the nightmare came from. They just got consumed by it but they are not aware of how it came to be. Though this leaves a possible question towards Scarlet in that if she knows this secret, how come she didn’t tell the splinter faction of the NC that was a part of the Toxic Alliance. Then again, she is still very cuckoo since her experiment with Omadd.

@Kossage: To me, the line that Faolain only cares about power suggests that she would be willing to serve another if doing so granted her more power than she would have otherwise.

@Malkavian: I can think of two reasons:

The reason I’m more inclined to take is that Scarlet was still somewhat resisting Mordremoth. Thanks to Braham we don’t know what her actual plans were, but we do know that Scarlet wasn’t entirely happy with being Mordremoth’s catspaw, and it’s entirely possible that, while foced to act to hasten Modremoth’s awakening, she did manage to take some actions to reduce Mordremoth’s power.

The other possibility is simply that Mordremoth didn’t want to reveal his sleeper army until he could get the most benefit from it.

There is no Mordrem Court, though. The devs have said before that mob was named that because of some kind of glitch.