This story began with a human soldier named Ronan whom, while separated from his patrol, discovered a cavern filled with strange seed-pods. This cavern was protected by terrible plant creatures, so he fled, clinging to a single seed to show his daughter when he returned home from war. But, upon his arrival, Ronan discovered the Mursaat had destroyed his village and murdered his family, leaving only ruined houses and mass graves. In agony, he planted the seed on their graves and swore never to return to battle.
Ronan was joined by an aging Centaur named Ventari, who had also begun to lose hope in peace. The human and the Centaur, against all odds, formed a friendship that surpassed the bounds of race. Together, they decided to begin their lives anew and create a refuge for human and Centaur alike. They built their safe haven near the ocean and the budding tree for all those who sought peace and the shelter of friendship.
The pale oak grew under the watchful and gentle eye of Ventari, becoming strong and healthy, and giving the old Centaur great joy. Yet with this bliss came sorrow. The Centaur tribes of the north and west, crushed and driven out by Krytans fleeing from their flooding coastline, grew more and more savage and brutal. As more tribes joined the war, fewer were willing to listen to Ventari’s words, and his new outpost became smaller and smaller.
At last, old and gray, Ventari carved his life’s lessons upon a marble tablet, which he placed at the base of the pale tree so that future travelers might read it and, perhaps, learn the ways of peace and harmony. Then, many years after his human companion had passed on, Ventari laid down beside the tree Ronan had planted, and died. The year was 1165 AE.
The tree, white and sparkling, continued to grow. Over a hundred years later, small cocoons appeared among its branches. These cocoons spun out, shifting and eventually ripping open, birthing a new race of people into the world—fully grown, as if they had awakened from some magical dream. They called themselves the Sylvari, and these “Firstborn” were only the beginning of a widespread emergence, all born from the same massive tree.
The marble tablet still bears Ventari’s last words, and the Sylvari who emerged from the tree found themselves strangely guided by these ancient lessons. Whether the tree, tended by Ventari, somehow became imprinted with the noble Centaur’s morals and ethics, or whether it absorbed both the remains of the Centaur’s flesh as well as his compassionate soul upon his death, no one knows for certain. But it is certain that his influence over the Sylvari is strong, even so many decades after his death. Their race venerates the Ventari Tablet as their most sacred artifact and testament.
