The Dream, The Mists, and Sylvari Death

[Kathryn.3547]

So I'm an avid roleplayer who primarily plays sylvari and one thing Path of Fire expansion added was a massive complication to what death means for sylvari.

 

As long as I've roleplayed in gw2 (almost 5 years now), it's been widely accepted that sylvari go to the dream when they die-- courtiers and dreamers alike, which is how syvlari in their deaths can 'feed nightmare'; they bring their suffering with them to the dream.

 

Now in Path of fire,

Spoiler

Balthazar absolutely decimates the commander, ending their life-- sending them to the mists, where you have that instance trying to find your way back. Even if you're a sylvari.

 

This complicates the idea that sylvari go to the Dream when they die-- so which is it? Do they go to the Dream? Do they go to the Mists? Is it just their memories, echoes, that go to the Dream and and they are severed from (rather than folded into) the sylvari hivemind? 

 

Does anyone have confirmed lore from ANET, any of the gw2 books, or even other theories on the topic?

[AgentMoore.9453]

4 hours ago, Kathryn.3547 said:

As long as I've roleplayed in gw2 (almost 5 years now), it's been widely accepted that sylvari go to the dream when they die

I've seen this used romantically (as in poetic), but very seldom literally in the Sylvari RP community. What I have seen, at least among Courtier RPers, is the idea that the suffering of Sylvari victims (and other races, by way of the Courtier beaming back their perspective of the experience) makes its way to the Dream in the form of memories and collective experience, not that the Sylvari/victim themself physically goes there upon death.

 

If you really want to cut to the root of it (HaHA!), even the Pale Tree has no idea what the Dream really is, and she admits she's only a caretaker of it. There's no reason why the Dream can't be an aspect of the Mists, the Eternal Alchemy, or something else entirely. That we, the Sylvari pact commander, wind up in the Domain of the Lost seems to confirm that Sylvari souls go where everyone else's do, and that's further confirmed in Dragonfall where you can encounter a huge number of Sylvari Mist Wardens (Souls from the Mists who are allied with Glint).

 

So, you know, interpret that however you want, since that's usually what we roleplayers do in the absence of more solid lore. The Dream is for memories, visions, and feelings, the Mists is for souls/entities.

[Kossage.9072]

SPOILERS

 

Indeed, until Path of Fire showed sylvari ghost NPCs (you can chat with one of them in the cave) in the Domain of the Lost (not to mention the sylvari player), we didn't really know if sylvari, who are essentially plant elementals given their origin, even had souls per se. I understand they had to go with this reveal because otherwise the sylvari experience of "The Departing" would've needed another reason to follow the other four playable races' experiences in the Domain of the Lost and afterlife shenanigans in general.

 

However, it does raise the intriguing lore question whether other elemental dragon minions such as destroyers, certain constructed Branded such as the Shatterer, or the "regular" mordrem like mordrem wolves, mordrem husks etc. have souls too. That would then lead us to investigate if your typical elementals and oozes also have souls; djinn are a type of intelligent elemental, so perhaps they have souls and elementals having souls of some kind wouldn't be that far fetched, but it would certainly lead to major dicoveries in worldbuilding.

 

If this isn't the case, sylvari souls would have to come from another source than just being random plant elemental beings. Perhaps the souls could be tied to the Dream somehow, as the Dream somehow gives sylvari Gaelic-inspired names (e.g. Cadeyrn, Faolain) or names relating to plants and flowers like Rose.

 

While sylvari may say stuff like "I will be remembered in the Dream", we learn in the novel Ghosts of Ascalon and in the personal story that the Dream may be a Mists-connected "realm", or rather a mindscape, of sorts, it is not an afterlife per se.

 

Avatar of the Pale Tree: The Dream is the sylvari unconscious, the wellspring from which we flow. It holds our memories, as well as our hopes and fears. I am its keeper. [...]

<Character name: What do you mean?

Trahearne: The Dream is not reality, <Character name>. It is made of memory, aether, and powerful magic. Even I do not understand it. (Source)

 

As seen with the Knight of the Thorn side quest about fixing Caladbolg, we meet with Trahearne. However, this Trahearne is not the real Trahearne but "merely" the memory of him from Caladbolg's Dream according to Ridhais's dialogue. Similarly, the visions we see of Ventari etc. in the sylvari tutorial Dream instance are not the souls of Ventari etc. but just how they're remembered in the Dream. In a way, you could liken the Dream versions of Trahearne, Riannoc, Ventari etc. to revenant legends: they, just like the legends, are echoes of a real person and can react independently to new stimuli (as seen with how Caladbolg's Trahearne reacts to news of his death in the way Caladbolg believes he would have reacted, or how the rev legend Kalla reacts to seeing her statue which was constructed decades/centuries after her original self's death, while the real Kalla's ghost may or may not be even be aware of all the tributes made in her honor in Tyria). In fact, the Blighted Pale Tree, Eir, Canach, the three order mentors etc. in HoT's final battle also follow a similar idea: they, too, are echoes of real persons (albeit twisted by Mordremoth because of Dream/Nightmare and Mind magic shenanigans somehow) who can be swayed with our words and actions.

 

In Ghosts of Ascalon, Killeen further clarifies on the nature of the Dream and how these memories that are fed to it affect future sylvari generations still quickening within the Dream. She also makes a point that the Dream is not a hivemind:

 

"It isn't mind-reading," said Killeen, "and we aren't all connected to one big mass mind. However, before we come into the world, the sylvari are united in the Dream of Dreams." [...]

"We were not there when all this happened, but we know it because of the Dream of Dreams. While we were quickening within the golden fruit of the Pale Tree, the tree spoke to us of the world outside. She taught us, if you will, of the nature of the waking world.

"We are not all-knowing," she continued. "The Dream of Dreams is not like a tome of all knowledge. But it does give us a life before our life, in which we learn much of the world we are coming into. Fire is hot. Wild animals can be dangerous, but many can be tamed. Here is a proper way to use a sword. This is how you cast a spell, if you are so disposed. We come into the world with knowledge of the world, but not necessarily the experience."

Riona shook her head. "Is there a difference? Experience gives you knowledge."

"For humans, most likely," said Killeen, "but not for us." She picked up an oversized drumstick. "This is a leg of a young moa. I know that it was a moa from the Dream, and further that it is well cooked but not overcooked. I know what it tastes like but have never tasted it myself."
 

As seen with how strongly the Dream reacted to the death of the first sylvari, Riannoc (based on Pale Tree's poetic description of the effect), but didn't have as major an impact on subsequent firstborn deaths like Wynne's which was just as traumatic if not more so than Riannoc, it shows that the Dream becomes desensitized to stimuli of that nature over time. So the first death (Riannoc), the first torture (Malomedies), the first act of making love, the first time eating a specific food etc. has the most impact, but subsequent stuff becomes more diluted. This seems to be the reason why the Nightmare Courtiers take more and more hardcore methods of inflicting pain, anger etc. so they can continue influencing the Dream via Nightmare and why they kept thinking of new ways of mental and physical torture to reach that end, partially explaining why a splinter group of them decided to work on the Tower of Nightmares to this end.

 

As such, the memories in the Dream are incomplete and are based on an emotional reaction of a sort from what we've seen. So yeah, from what we can see so far based on the evidence presented in game and the novels, the sylvari do not go to the Dream when they die but some of the memories of their experiences do (if those experiences were strong enough to register to the increasingly desensitized Dream--see the Nightmare Court discussion above) and thus we can say that some sylvari's deeds will indeed live on to influence future generations of sylvari during their quickening. Based on the clues in "The Departing" with sylvari souls, sylvari (and possibly other mordrem unless sylvari are a special case of constructed dragon minion because of their curious connection to the Dream which opposes Elder Dragons) have their own afterlife out there in the Mists just like we learned from the human ghost Nicholas and norn ghost Yngvild in the same instance that humans and norn apparently have separate afterlives too.

 

A lot still remains unclear about the nature of the Dream and Nightmare. Both exist in a sort of mindscape (presumably in the Mists?), both are opposed to dragons (based on Edge of Destiny and HoT depiction of Nightmare Courtiers opposing dragons), both send Wyld/Dark Hunts that can be mundane but can also involve a grand story about opposing the dragons (even going so far as to kill them based on sylvari player's continuous Wyld Hunt to end the dragons), and the Dream somehow grants sylvari names often of Gaelic origin for some reason. The Dream involves not only sylvari (and presumably some if not all mordrem too as we learn from Malyck's story that there may actually be multiple Dreams out there) but also curious non-mordrem like the White Stag which is a sort of physical manifestation of the Dream on Tyria and acts as a gateway of sorts to directly influence the Dream. Nightmare somehow acts a bit like dragon corruption that neither it nor dragon corruption's effects can presumably be reversed (if not counting the curious corruption reversals during Champions) and the Nightmare somehow alters the affected sylvari's mind to turn darker (although some, like Gavin, still had some honor left). The Dream seems to be quite wise (given its deliberate and prophetic Wyld Hunts and its ability to show visions of potential futures as we witnessed during the Orr vision in personal story) but also naïve at the same time as it doesn't know everything about Tyria.

 

As such, we'll have to wait for more sylvari story content to hopefully explore the true origins of the Dream and Nightmare, why they're both opposed to dragons but approach it in different ways, how Mordremoth originally became a parasite leeching on the Dream (was its Mind magic somehow a direct link to the Dream which actively shielded sylvari from its influence, or are the Dreams just manifestations of the Mind sphere of influence in the All?), and why there appear to be multiple Dreams or at least some sylvari like Malyck seemingly lacking a Dream (assuming the connection is cut off). There's a lot of cool things the Narrative Team can explore with this stuff as they flesh out the greater cosmological questions of Tyria, maybe even teasing some Koda stuff a bit while they're at it, as well as what the afterlives of non-human races are like in the Mists (e.g. the dragon afterlife and if Elder Dragons end up in the dragon afterlife after dying or if something else happened to their souls due to their ties to the All). 🙂

Edited July 5, 2021 by Kossage.9072