Guild Wars 2

The first sylvari “found themselves strangely guided by” Ventari’s tablet. To this day, many still do. But there is a growing number of sylvari who are not drawn to it.

Most players have heard of Malyck, a sylvari encountered during a path of the race’s personal storyline, who wasn’t born of the Pale Tree and who didn’t appear to experience a Dream. I write “didn’t appear” deliberately, because plenty of theories have been proposed about Malyck’s seemingly-soundless state, all of which ultimately fall into one of two categories: The first, Malyck did experience a Dream; the second, he did not. Some of those theories went further, questioning whether the tablet of the centaur Ventari might be the reason why sylvari born of the Pale Tree dream. To that question, valid criticisms have been presented, leaving most in no doubt about the answer: The tablet is just that – a tablet, nothing more. The greatest influence upon the Pale Tree is not a slab of inscribed marble, but Ventari himself. Even the Movement of the World suggests this when it states that, although no one knows for certain, it is believed that the Pale Tree either somehow became imprinted with the noble Centaur’s morals and ethics, or…absorbed both the remains of the Centaur’s flesh as well as his compassionate soul upon [Ventari’s] death”.

Most players are familiar with Cadeyrn too – at least, all of those who have completed the Twilight Arbor dungeon story mode. He died ignominiously in the arbor, his corpse left to rot where it fell, at the hands of his elder sister Caithe and a band of adventurers loyal to her. Cadeyrn was a sylvari who questioned the influence of the tablet on not only the Pale Tree but also her children. To him, the tablet was more than just a medium for words, it was somehow evil. As the first of the second generation of sylvari to awaken from the mother tree, Cadeyrn also formed the first of his siblings to express such an opinion, and whilst he may not have been at the top of every player’s Wintersday wish-list, he might just have been right.

No one knows from where Ventari obtained his tablet. The Movement of the World states that it is marble. By my estimates, having observed the slab hanging in the omphalos chamber, it stands as many as three sylvari high by one wide. So it is a big, heavy stone – one that cannot easily be moved, even by a centaur. In Guild Wars 1, in the youth of the Pale Tree, Ventari was joined at Arbor Bay by another of his kind, Ehrgen Windmane. Perhaps the two of them moved the block?
There are mines throughout Tyria that may also double as quarries, including Prosperity. That mine is the closest to the Grove and a potential – albeit unlikely – source of marble. I have to admit though, it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that Ventari would actually take the time to excavate new marble from a region replete with old masonry. Located a few days north of the Grove in Caledon Forest, the Ruins of the Unseen are prototypical of the numerous temples erected by the White Mantle throughout the jungle. It is no stretch to envision Ventari taking marble from one of them.

The story goes that just before Ventari died, he placed the tablet at the foot of the Pale Tree. It didn’t stay there. Sometime thereafter, the tree picked the stone up, drawing it into her crown where it has remained to this day, cradled. Or should I say, grasped? For the tree is willing to part even with her own children before she ever would the tablet. Her first cast-off was none other than Cadeyrn.

We don’t really know that much about the lives of sylvari. In “What Scarlet Saw”, however, Scott McGough reminded us that not everything about their Dream is idyllic. For whereas “[s]ome [sylvari drop from the Pale Tree] like autumn leaves, slowly drifting down to root level, [w]here they [stand], [stretch], and then set out into the void…[s]ome never [make] it that far, staggering, falling, and withering within the shade of the great tree”. Thankfully, Cadeyrn’s awakening wasn’t as troubled as those of his younger siblings; but there are indications that he nonetheless had what can only be described as “developmental complications”. At his awakening, Aife is said to have tossed Cadeyrn’s “black-willow fronds”. Like Faolain before him, then, Cadeyrn may well have been born with black hair, eyes and nails. (It should come as no surprise, then, that the two became so close, so much so that Faolain defected to the Nightmare Court – they both had physiological imperfections that left them feeling inadequate; nor should it surprise us that Cadeyrn was so deeply affected by the sight of a tortured Malomedies and why he felt that Faolain (and, by extension, Caithe) would be his strongest ally in pushing for vengeance, because they all knew what it was like to be in Malomedies’ position.) Deformed sylvari are probably less likely to experience the call of the Dream in the form of a Wyld Hunt. Why? Because they are less likely to complete it. In a sense, you could say that the Dream rejects any sylvari who doesn’t measure up.

I don’t think that Cadeyrn ever felt the call of the Wyld Hunt. Granted, as per Dream and Nightmare he does state that he dreamed, but there are peculiarities about his behavior immediately after his awakening that warrant further investigation. Dagonet asked him, ““Do you know us? […] Did you dream of us?”” Cadeyrn didn’t answer immediately, but if his dream involved his siblings, why did he behave as though he was the first to awaken? For it was only after he asserted himself, declaring “I am first!” that he was reminded that he was not the first sylvari to awaken. Furthermore, if his dream involved information pertaining to his immediate surroundings, why did he ask, “What is this place?” Shouldn’t it have been obvious to him? Finally, he is described as “uncertain” when recalling his own name. These three irregularities make me highly suspicious of the nature of Cadeyrn’s dream, if he even dreamed at all; and they make me certain that he was not called by the Dream in the form of a Wyld Hunt.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Cadeyrn “puffed up like a Dandelion” in the presence of his peers; he was trying to compensate for his perceived lack by bluffing. But his efforts were vanity from the start. Continually corrected, he was never more than a stranger to his own family. It was from this position that his perspective about the tablet formed: it had to go.
Stories are like fences – there are two sides to them. On my side, Cadeyrn wasn’t always the demon of Nightmare that he became. But there are bound to be those who maintain otherwise. To them, Cadeyrn was “[p]rideful even as he awakened”. I’m not dismissing this perspective, but I’m not wholeheartedly embracing it either. I can understand why Cadeyrn descended into Nightmare; I can relate to him and I have become increasingly convinced that he was not entirely to blame for his transmogrification. His mother and elder siblings played a major part in it.

Caithe’s famous statement, ““You are either firstborn…or you are simply sylvari”” may have been the final straw plucked from Cadeyrn’s stack, but you can be sure that it wasn’t the only one. One of the first was taken by Niamh. She and Cadeyrn were fighting krait (presumably in Caledon Forest) when the latter uncovered a hatchery. Cadeyrn wanted to kill the larvae inside, but Niamh restrained him, stating that such an action would violate the tenets of the tablet. Careful reading of the text detailing these events reveals some interesting details.
The sylvari were attacking the krait. Why? They may have been trying to save captured sylvari, retaliating, or, as the record states, exterminating the serpents. Yes, that’s right, they were exterminating the krait. The simple reality is that there was no reason for the hatch-lings to be spared; Cadeyrn’s reasoning was sound. So why did Niamh quote from the tablet, saying, ““All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed””? Let’s just get one thing straight: When you invade someone’s home and threaten their young, it should come as no surprise that you will be resisted. What? Were the adult krait killed because they could fight, but the young were spared because they could not? Please. The adult krait were fighting because they perceived that the welfare of their so-called “children” was being threatened. Frankly, every sylvari that died in that raid deserved to die and Niamh’s quotation of the tablet was nothing more than the blind recitation of a naïve hypocrite. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that it was almost as though the stone had placed an enchantment upon the firstborn.

Any hope of recovering Cadeyrn was lost when he confronted the Pale Tree about his inability to control his negative emotions. The Pale Tree’s decision to cease communication with her son was akin to disowning him. Realizing that his mother would not support him, Cadeyrn resolved to change her, or so he thought. His plan was to reduce her to his own level, to help her see things from his perspective. Make no mistake, I am not sanctioning Cadeyrn’s behavior. However, I am suggesting that if the Pale Tree had reasoned further with her son she might have saved him.

Cadeyrn proposed destroying the Ventari tablet, to “”see what it truly means to be sylvari””. Doing so would determine whether the Dream is a biological characteristic of sylvari, or a characteristic of physical contact with the slab.
Numerous suggestions have been made by the player base, advancing the idea that the tablet might be magical. These suggestions have largely been dismissed by critics. To even submit such a view, they reason, one must at least prove that Ventari was a magician and no such evidence to do so exists.

However, I’m not so sure that we should keep discarding this proposition. Ventari may not have entertained travelers with spell-casting, but he certainly wasn’t your average centaur, either. Furthermore, we know that there are various schools of magic, at least one of which produces students whose powers aren’t exactly obvious (of course, I’m referring to ritualists); others teach their pupils how to enchant objects like runes, sigils, signets, and glyphs. Could the tablet be one of these?
It is well known within learned circles of lore that the continent of Tyria is strewn with stones from which creatures can be summoned, such as the stones of Kolkorensburg and the Hidden Rock; there are smaller stones too, like the Igneous Summoning Stone. It is also known that these objects are activated by touch. Sylvari are summoned by the Dream, entering “this ring of existence” (Tyria) through the “vein” – the Pale Tree – who just happens to be holding a large stone tablet. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Moreover, it would be interesting to learn that the tablet acts as a ward against Elder Dragonic corruption.

But if the tablet really is magical and is responsible for the sylvari state of Dream, surely it is good? Who knows? Players of Guild Wars 1 know all about sinister stones. Varesh Ossa was hailed by many Elonians as one of their greatest leaders. Described as charismatic and politically savvy, she began as one of the brightest stars in humanity’s sky, only to fade into Nightfall after learning the teachings of Abaddon as they were inscribed on what later became known as a graven monolith: the Apocrypha.

Let us hope that history is not written in stone.