Showing Posts For Hystere.1873:
There is of course the problem of Malyck, the fact that while he may be bloodthirstier than most Sylvari he’s clearly not evil. My answer is simply that Malyck is, in fact, an incredibly weak counterpoint. We know absolutely nothing about him. While it’s unlikely that he wasn’t we don’t even have any evidence that he was born from a Tree at all, only speculation by Pale Tree sylvari because he sure didn’t remember. His presence and personality is certainly relevant and meaningful but I think that at this time we have entirely too little information regarding him and his true origins to make any sort of real postulation based on him or his story beyond that there are other Trees. Trees without Dreams could revert to a neutral, natural state like a particularly large normal plant or Sylvari cut off from their Dream or Nightmare by some external force could revert to a neutral easily-influenced state, or Trees could be on some level interconnected and thus the Pale Tree exerts an influence on the other trees so they have minority Sylvari and majority Nightmare Court in reverse of the Pale Tree, and Malyck was a survivor of some kind of purge by the true minions or whatever, you could come up with a billion theories for and against that are all tailor made to fit with how vague Malyck’s origins are right now.
Three: the Nightmare is not an external corruption of the Dragon but their base programming. It is true that some Sylvari are turned to and corrupted by the Nightmare through imprisonment and torture by the Nightmare Court, but I think this is a reversion to their base personalities. This method erases the purpose given them by the Dream, or perverts it, leaving them blank slates that only know destruction rather than where they’re meant to fit in in the greater whole, more like a damaged system trying to repair itself and leaving scar tissue than properly healing itself. However there are Sylvari who experienced the Nightmare directly within the Dream and were born to it, Sylvari who were essentially designed and programmed to, at some point, join the Nightmare Court. Those are the Sylvari who join willingly, without having to be captured and tortured. Some even have Dark Hunts, actual directives that they are driven to do by the Nightmare they experienced with the intention of spreading the Nightmare to consume the Tree. Counterarguments have included the presence of Nightmare Spiders and Hounds, but Nightmare Spiders are simply spiders trained to serve the Court, not dragon-corrupted creatures. Any time any other creature has become dragon-corrupted it has mutated and transformed, taking on characteristics of it’s creator. Nightmare Spiders are just spiders. As for the Hounds, Sylvan Hounds are stated in game to have been born from the Pale Tree, thus they are theoretically also minions of the dragon and thus also susceptible to legitimate influence by the Nightmare, not simply training.
Four: Ventari did not “corrupt” the Pale Tree. Rather, I think, he evolved it. All of the other dragon’s minions share one thing in common: they are no longer strictly “alive”, they are all but mindless drones controlled directly by the will of the dragons, or their lieutenants. They have their advantages: Destroyers may have infinite numbers as they are formed from the earth itself, and Zhaitan could turn his enemy’s fallen against them. But despite this, if my theory is correct then the Dream, an adaptive program to create the perfect army, renders the Sylvari by far the most capable, most powerful, and most dangerous enemies to Tyria. The drawback to this is that unlike the other minions, they are alive, they are plants, and living plants have a tenancy to mutate and evolve on their own. Being such magical plants in such a magic-intensive place as the Maguuma Jungle, it’s not difficult to imagine it simply evolving as it grew, influenced not by some sentient understanding of Ventari’s teachings but perhaps by some natural magic in Ventari’s tablet, produced by his faith and his fervent resolve in his beliefs and desire to see those beliefs translated to others. Force of will and faith are legitimate forms of magic in Tyria as faith in the Gods produces results, even in such instances as the Grawl and their ridiculous zealotry. How else could their shamans produce magic not through research and understanding but by blind faith in such powerful gods as “This Oddly Shaped Stick” and “That Big Rock Over There”? Those examples are ridiculous but they worshipped at least one Pact guard tower and I know that wasn’t doing them any favors. Why then would it be hard to believe that a wise old centaur like Ventari couldn’t magically influence the development and evolution of the Pale Tree through raw will and faith? This evolution did not necessarily hard-code the Tablet into the Sylvari so none could believe otherwise, but rather the good will and peaceful message produced by his beliefs helped bring virtue and goodness to the sylvari, balancing out their inherent evil and making them as morally grey as everyone else and capable of making their own choices. The Nightmare then is vestigial, but considering its origin it’s likely capable of reprogramming the whole system back to it’s default state, which is exactly their intention. The Dragons aren’t infallible: they aren’t all-seeing and all-knowing, however much power they have. Why would a Dragon think that stealing one of the seeds of his production facilities would have any other effect than to, in time, destroy the thief and begin wreaking his destruction on Tyria?
I think the problem is people are dealing too much in absolutes here. The Pale Tree is either an Elder Dragon or a Champion? That sounds entirely too absolute. The champions, for one, are not the only source of making minions. Tequatl the Sunless doesn’t make undead, he summons them. The Shatterer doesn’t create the Branded, he draws them from the Brand which is the actual production facility. Certainly even if it’s argued that they do make them themselves nobody would claim that all minions came from the champions as even in the story we see an undead production facility that has nothing to do with dragons in any shape or form. Further I really don’t even need to get into how silly an idea the Pale Tree being an Elder Dragon is.
That being said, each dragon produces their minions differently. Zhaitan mass-produces them in reanimation production facilities. Kralkatorrik created the Brand, turning the earth and air themselves into his factory. Jormag uses formations of blighted ice to generate ice monsters and corrupt creatures around it, and Primordius is indicated to have some sort of center of production deep underground that the Dwarves are keeping under relative control.
So I’m going to make a few counter-points of my own.
One: the Trees are not dragons or champions but mass production facilities, intended to create hordes of minions much the same as any of the other dragons do.
Two: The Dream was an intentional part of this, a system for programming his minions to be smarter and more powerful with each germination, learning and adapting to the failings of the previous ones like the Borg in Star Trek. Further the Dream guides each Sylvari individually on how they are to live their lives, what they’re meant to accomplish, and giving them in advanced all the skills they will need in their lives. To me, that sounds perfectly suited to programming an army, one interconnected where every creature is perfectly suited to their roles by design that adapts itself to suit changing conditions in an ongoing war.