#gw2 ventari

[eparch]

I was looking through my art and found this doodle I did last year ahahaha

I believe the idea had been "sitcom where Ventari and Ronan raise their adoptive daughter while Mordremoth keeps trying to get her back in Shenanigans"

[brax-was-here]

I might be looking too far into this but...

I was sitting around comparing the world map of Guild Wars 1 to GW2's world map, specifically trying to figure out where Ventari's refuge might have been in the GW2 world.

Basically, this puts it right in the middle of the Guilded Hollow guild hall. Which caused me to remember...there is a very large tree at the very top of the Guild Hall. (In GW1, Ventari's Refuge was located under a large tree.)

Bonus, I just realized they painted the skybox texture to show Mordremoth's tree in the distance.

[guildtree]

Laurel is an ex-Vanguard mercenary who stole a Priory artifact and jumped into the Mists in search of arcane power. She found it, but not in the way she expected; the centaur Ventari now haunts her mind, encouraging her to do horrible things like meditate, connect with nature, and resolve conflicts peacefully. Laurel despises these new healing powers, as they make her general pattern of “fight everything in her way” rather complicated. She’d better figure them out quick though, because her year-long disappearance into the Mists has made her the target of both a Priory retrieval team and her old mercenary company.

Laurel prefers blunt weapons: maces, hammers, and especially staves. She’s strong enough to put a lot of damage behind them, and her fighting style is best described as quick, fierce, and brutal. She’s never had any sort of magical ability before, and she has no intention of changing her old ways, much to Ventari’s dismay. He’s rusted out her mace and wrapped her staff in vines, but he can’t quite manage to keep her from hitting people with the thorns just yet. He does, however, utterly refuse to help her with anything violent, so she’s on her own when it comes to offense.

Laurel is stubborn, acerbic, suspicious, and surprisingly clever when she wants to be. Her main problem is that she doesn’t trust anyone, which leads her to double-cross others before, in her mind, they will inevitably double-cross her. She puts no stock in love or blood ties, and even less in formal contracts; to her, the only thing she can rely on is power. To be fair, she’s had few people worthy of her trust. She’s been betrayed multiple times – or at least, she thinks she has.

The worst betrayal came during her time in the Vanguard. Young and naïve, Laurel voluntarily joined a mission assigned by a captain that she trusted with her whole heart, only to find out too late that she'd signed up for a suicide mission. She alone survived by sheer luck and playing dead, but not before a charr soldier tore open her back from hip to opposite shoulder blade, leaving her with extensive scars.

While they’ve long healed, the scars still hinder her at times. While short bursts of mobility are fine, walking or even standing for too long unaided puts pressure on her spine and results in pain (shockingly, this does not improve her attitude). While Laurel generally chooses not to tell anyone about her condition, secretly her staff serves as a mobility aid as well as her chief weapon. Ventari has offered to help with pain mitigation as well, encouraging Laurel to make better use of his healing abilities for that purpose. Laurel isn’t quite sure if she trusts his advice yet, but maybe a little testing couldn’t hurt?

Obviously, this little disaster of a revenant has a long road ahead. Maybe she’ll wind up a proper healer eventually, if she can manage to avoid the many dangers and less-charitable Legends that would love to prey on her. I have new Legends and new mortal friends ready for her (some of whom have their own in-game models and stories), a general backstory, and the bones of an adventure. I might even write it down someday :P

TL,DR: Local angry mercenary must learn to become a better person with help from her friends and the voices in her head.

[bluebudgie]

You can tell how much i've played revenant since it was released with HoT by how I just switched to the demon stance and my reaction was "oh god it makes different sound effects than the dwarf"

[vespertine-legacy]

Picked Herald as Dag’s specialization, and I can definitely see myself unaliving her with the Facet of Nature since I’ve been favoring using Mallyx over the other Legends, and Mallyx’s Facet transfers conditions from allies onto you and I will absolutely forget to use the Consume ability to then transfer those conditions onto enemies. So instead of it being a transitive haw haw stop bleeding yourself, I’m just gonna be standing there like a dumbass taking way more damage than I’m supposed to like “why my health go bye bye :(“

[diamond-dangeresque]

it's actually really fucking appalling how many people either Do Not Want To or even Outright Refuse To Play GW1 and then just...remain ignorant about what transpired within these three "campaigns" (plus EOTN and the Bonus Mission Packs).

like, i get it. the gameplay style isn't for everyone. the skill-collecting can get incredibly grating if you don't know what you're doing. the graphics are...an acquired taste. if you're a fan of the Charr, Asura, or Norn...these games do NOT look upon them all that favorably. if you're a Sylvari enthusiast, they're not even in these games; the most you get is seeing the Pale Tree's sapling form and Ventari chilling beside it.

but.

whether it's through a longplay series, or intensive wiki-delving (and GW1's wiki is just as good as GW2's in case you care), or even finally biting that bullet just for those sweet sweet Hall of Monument rewards, please try and learn about these games. i promise you their stories are as good, albeit with some writing rust due to being written pre 2010s. (the latest writing is Winds of Change dated at 2011, i.e. a year shy of 2's proper release.) that the stories are human-centric does not detract from their quality, that the cutscenes are goofy ass in-game-machinima quality and the VAs were—notable names notwithstanding—mostly (probably) interns and whoevers pulled from their desks at ArenaNet does not unsuspend your disbelief (too much) in whatever investment you have in those stories.

please. please. give these games a chance. Guild Wars 2 straight-up does not exist without the campaigns and other expansions from 1 to serve as its backbone.

[havoc-warband]

Hi hello I have a headcanon for sylvari reproduction

(spoiler: it’s not How They Do On The Discovery Channel)

(and a disclaimer: i am not a gw2 sylvari scholar and all that is below is my personal Havocverse headcanon. though you are very welcome to pile on with other headcanons/tidbits from canon)

So we know how Ronan and Ventari found a cave filled with Weird Large Seeds, yoinked one, put it in the ground and 200 years later there’s the Pale Tree, right? And the Pale Tree is producing pods, from which sprout sylvari.

The Big Problem is Malyck, of course. Where did he come from, if not the Pale Tree? Where is his Tree? Does he have a tree?

The wiki says that the Dream is what differentiates the Pale Tree’s offspring from ordinary Mordrem, and Soundless and Nightmare are not protected from Mordremoth’s influence. I disagree with this.

Part 1 of the theory: I think that proximity matters, and it is actually the presence of Mordremoth’s influence that makes whatever spawns becomes a Mordrem. I think that if you somehow descend from the Big Nasty Jungle Dragon but you’re born far enough away, you’re fine.

Part 2 of the theory: What happened to the other seeds in that cave? Why did Malyck wake up in the middle of the forest with not a single memory? I think that, at some point, there was a storm, which knocked some other seeds out of the cave. Or maybe an animal. Maybe they fell into a stream at some point. The seeds ended up outside of Mordremoth’s range of influence. And unlike with the Pale Tree, no one was around to put these seeds into the ground. I think that they grew up to be sylvari, but of a different generation. I think that, had the Pale Tree not been put into dirt immediately, she might also have grown into a sylvari form first. I think that if you put a sylvari into the ground while they’re still alive, and give them a few hundred years, they will also grow into a tree. I think that Malyck was one of these seeds, and is actually the Pale Tree’s brother :]

[huntunderironskies]

optional bonus prompt but like if you WANTED to do skin for rami, i think he’s pretty cool

I absolutely want to--

So Rami has an...unfortunate relationship with his body and his self in general. His conception of his identity is very weak because he's not one person so much as lots of parts of different people (I got creative with what a Revenant could be) and he tends to see himself in what sort of utility he can provide to other people. Unfortunately ever since he was born (which, he's a Sylvari so it wasn't that long ago) that has mostly involved violence. He's comfortable with his body mostly in the sense that it's a useful tool to cause incredible pain and/or death in the defense of things he values. His self-esteem fluctuates wildly based on what he thinks other people think of him.

Probably the only thing keeping him from getting worse or trusting the wrong people is that he follows the tenants of Ventari's Tablet with single-minded devotion. HoT and onwards spoilers below the cut just in case I finally drag one of my beloved mutuals into GW2 with me (it's still on sale btw, I'm just saying, you've got until the 11th, countless hours of entertainment and quality time with me lie within and my guild is really helpful and supportive and beginner friendly--)

Rami's FP is pretty much without contest the Pale Tree so you can imagine he did not handle the end of LWS2 well and he starts spiraling once his already-tenuous link with her is broken. His second FP was Trahearne so, uh, long story short while he was never the commander in my canon (because nobody would trust him with a leadership position and he wouldn't want it even if he was given one) he had to take a sabbatical and someone else ended up dying in the desert but it's fine because that guy had an ancestral death curse so dying and getting better made him finally break the curse.

Deep down he's not happy with his life choices and the fact he keeps getting involved in violent conflicts but it's so ingrained into his life straight from his birth that trying to live peacefully would be even harder, and the time period where he was on sabbatical caused his mental health to kind of tank because fighting was his identity and he hasn't dealt well with trying to find another purpose in life.

(Probably the happiest he's ever been was helping the Sunspears to bolster the griffon population in Elona and raising his own griffon, Llamrei, from an egg. Fun fact, he's very heavily involved in general mount husbandry things and also has probably helped to boost the popularity of roller beetles in Tyria. It was a chance for him to actually make something grow instead of destroying.)

[mistfallengw2]

7, 8, 10 plus revenant for Aurelia :>

GW2 Profession Ask Questions or something IDK

7. How well do they handle their legends? Have they ever lost control?

Once she gets the hang of her powers post-Mists, pretty well actually! The voices are definitely noisy and annoying at times, but she never lost control of them in spite of not being a "fully-functional" revenant.

-

8. Can they channel any legends not shown in-game?

Sort of.

During the final fight with the Dragonvoid, when Aurene infuses her with her magic to keep her alive, Aurelia is able to channel the spirits of her late warband to come aid her (functionally the same as Kalla's powers). She managed to do it just that one time, and it's a major emotional moment that gave her some proper closure.

Glint's Legend also gets "taken over" by Aurene's powers over time, and Glint becomes quieter and quieter as it happens. By the time Aurene becomes a proper Elder Dragon, her powers are most of what Aurelia channels, and Aurelia has to really search for Glint's voice to hear it.

-

10. What’s their relationship with the legends they channel, be-it cooperative or adversarial?

Let's get the complicated one out of the way first: Glint. She is the reason why Aurelia became a Revenant. So that's a... positive, I guess? The brief training with her in the Mists was quite rough as Aurelia never had any magic talent of her own and the facet channeled a ton of powerful magic, which meant she didn't have the luxury to start small and slow. Still, Glint was a surprisingly effective teacher and Aurelia did perform quite well in spite of her struggles, mostly out of determination and desperation. Felt like being back to the fahrar on hard mode, so no real hard feelings there. The main issue though? Glint lied by omission, multiple times, and that was what led to Aurelia getting lost in the Mists by accident, with all the bad things that followed suit. In retrospect, Aurelia understands why she did so, but she does wish Glint had been honest about what happened to her warband after she ended up in the Mists (branded killed all but one of them). Initially (after she managed to remember things) there was some major resentment towards Glint, but the powers she had due to her were useful and saved many lives, so she tried to make peace with it. Uneasy, pained peace. Becoming the Champion of Aurene complicated things further, especially when Glint's prophecy jeopardized the dragonling's safety in ways she could not prevent, which felt eerily familiar and uncomfortable to Aurelia. Still, her powers became more similar to Aurene's over time, so that helped make things far less uneasy.

Kalla is her favorite to channel, as the kinship she always felt for such a hero of her people is somewhat comforting, and it's the easiest other legend for her to channel. Cuz, you know, she gets it. Jalis and Ventari are cooperative, not annoying, and they don't converse much with her, so that's an utterly neutral relationship with them both. The married couple Archemorus and Saint Viktor arrived late, after she woke up in Cantha. They're fine, though a bit awkward to have mentally-around, since their banter feels like something she's not supposed to be hearing. As for Shiro... well, it was a big relief once she managed to tune his voice out while still using his powers, as she really can't stand the guy. And Mallyx? Look, after what she went through in the best-forgotten part of her Mists misadventures, it feels like being threatened by a fly. Annoying, constantly buzzing in your ears, mostly harmless.

[ghostlycoyote0]

I may be about to cave and make a second GW2 character even though I’m nowhere near done with the story or any shorter-term goals with my current one, and this time I actually have the first idea for OC-ifying them

Basically, a Sylvari based on Into The Woods as a whole. They rejected Ventari’s teachings because they wanted to figure out right and wrong without being told it (AKA the whole moral of the show). Maybe personality-wise, I could draw from little fragments of each of the main cast, or a small lesson each of them learn

[commanderfloppy]

Some convos I found interesting while leveling in the starting area/re exploring the grove

Also: THAT'S YOUR GRANDPA YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT DON'T BE MEAN

[brax-was-here]

GW2: Caelan the Blade

The third chapter of my first Scarlet Briar story was a kind of recap of the events of LW1. During the Tower of Nightmares section of the chapter, I came up with the character of Caelan. Caelan was a Nightmare Courtier that had the task of having to relay information to Scarlet as the tower was being constructed. The sylvari was somewhat skittish with having to talk to Scarlet as anything he might say wrong could end with his death. The dialogue with him was short in the chapter, usually with Scarlet belittling the courtier. 

When I decided to have the Nightmare Court be Scarlet’s primary adversaries in “Seeds of Life”, I decided to bring Caelan back and give him some development. No longer just a mouthpiece with just a few lines of dialogue, he became a fully realized character. A Courtier that agreed with the premise that the sylvari should be able to live a life not governed by the tenants of Ventari’s tablet, but at the same time did not really agree with the violence that some of the higher ranks of the Court showed. This unfortunately caused him to make some poor choices that ultimately led to his near death at the hands of Duchess Nafiona. 

Scarlet found the barely living Caelan in the deep maguuma jungle and opted to take him back to Mender Seoras, even as Caelan was ready to let himself die. In the end, Seoras was able to keep Caelan alive. Now both Caelan and Orla, another former courtier of Nafiona’s court, stay in Seoras soundless village. 

Caelan may be my first GW2 character of 2023. 

[guildtree]

I've been playing GW1 for the first time after playing GW2 as a revenant for 7 years, and half the fun is finding a character and checking them off my list of revenant legends. I'm halfway through Factions and at this point I'm at 5 out of 7 (Jalis, Ventari, Glint, Shiro, Viktor/Archemorus).

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

Dreamscape - headcanon

During the Claw Island arc, we entered the Dream to see a landscape of Orr. It was not really Orr, of course; just the Dream's representation of it. Likewise, it was also not a memory of one seeing Orr, though we are told the Dream is made up of memory.

This is the primary way we have encountered the Dream and Dream-like things: for example, Mordremoth's mind, or Caladbolg's visions. Yet we believe the Dream of Dreams, the pre-life Dream of the sylvari, is an experience almost solely of memory: the memories of sylvari that have awakened.

How much agency does one have in these memory-visions? I think not much. Sylvari are said to desire experiences to differentiate themselves from other sylvari who have seen the same or similar visions.

I believe the pre-life Dream is a mixture of dreamscapes and visions. The sylvari tutorial instance takes place inside a real dreamscape - unlike the landscapes of Orr and of Mordremoth's mind, the real dreamscape is a little more random, like real dreams; various things all put together. But not a direct vision or memory, just a dreamscape.

Ventari is in this tutorial dreamscape, as is a quaggan and a norn. Quaggan did not populate the continent of Tyria while Ventari was alive; they were still in deep waters. I think these dreamscapes are formed of memories; that is, they incorporate elements of many different memories (as real dreams incorporate the day's experiences), but it is not a vision.

What is a vision? It is a memory of another: an experience they had, seen through their eyes, and a Dreaming sylvari may even experience their emotions. These are... more directed than dreamscapes. A vision is given to a sylvari by the Dream, or the Pale Tree guides them into it to learn something. Thus, these visions may be a combination of two or more memories: but they will be memories of very similar things.

For example, we know that before the Personal Story, only two sylvari had ever seen Zhaitan: Trahearne and Caithe. A sapling could very easily get both of these at the same time; perhaps they would experience the emotions of both, or see the dragon from two different angles at once, or the continuity of the ground below would be awkwardly messed up. But the point and meaning of the vision - Zhaitan - would remain.

A sylvari may experience a memory of a sylvari casting magic; then in the dreamscape, they can practice it on their own.

I imagine most dreamscapes are like the tutorial one; more put together than multiple visions of the same thing, with contradictions only really notable if you know history (as in the case of Ventari and quaggans in the same room) or the like.

There is a question I have had for a long time: when you meet Caithe, who says "can you hear me where you are, in the Dream?" your character responds, "in the Dream? What does that mean?"

Your character knows what the Dream is. They was just talking about it earlier. So why this question? I believe the reason is that your sylvari doesn't perceive there to be an 'outside the Dream.' They has never questioned where the memory-visions come from.

Life, to an un-awakened sapling, is just dreamscapes and memories. That is how the world works. They are aware of the Pale Tree (Anet blog posts have said the Pale Tree makes sure each sapling knows they is loved) but don't quite understand where or what it is, exactly, except that she's a person who loves them and will take care of them.

[vespertine-legacy]

I finally thought to get a shot of some of the passive dialogue with Mallyx

[kerra-and-company]

Kerra and public opinion

This post is a few days late, whoops, but putting it into the world nonetheless! Borrowing your title style @i-mybrunettelady​, and here’s the post as promised! :) Vague spoilers for basically the entire story, but especially LWS2-HoT.

The world in general definitely has Opinions (TM) on the Commander, but for the purposes of this post I’m specifically addressing how other sylvari see her.

From the moment Kerra awakens, she’s known as the Valiant who fought with Firstborn Caithe in the Dream. She’s not really known as herself, and she never attends classes with the Menders and the other saplings. Because of this, she’s more of a symbol and a goal to reach than a real person to most sylvari.

The more she interacts with the world, though, the more tangible she becomes. She’s not prickly like Caithe is or as far away as Trahearne seems--she’s right there, helping with the Nightmare Court or the krait or a sapling’s homework assignment about Ventari’s tablet. When she leaves to defeat Zhaitan and succeeds, it’s the success of Marshal (and Firstborn) Trahearne and the Pact, but it’s also the success of someone they can more easily claim as a peer. Kerra’s the type of popular figure where a lot of sylvari claim to know her personally and tell stories about her, and some of them are even true.

As the timeline moves through LWS2, Kerra comes back to Caledon and the Grove less and less often due to a combination of her duties as Commander and her confusion about her Wyld Hunt. She becomes progressively more of a myth to the sylvari and the new saplings, partly because of the distance and partly because this is the first “generation” to start learning about Kerra from the Dream.

In Maguuma, she’s a shining symbol of resistance against Mordremoth, especially to those who hypothesize (correctly) that the jungle dragon is her true Wyld Hunt. At the same time, she’s tangible again, at least to the sylvari Pact soldiers. She rescues them from pods, defends camps, and does her best to deal with anyone snarking about how their race is inherently distrustworthy (along with Nisha, who they grow to know and respect as well during this time, but that’s for another post). The story of Mordremoth’s defeat and how the Commander managed to save the Marshal with, to oversimplify it by quite an extensive amount, a little bit of magic and a lot of caring, is a favorite one.

From LWS3 through to the present, Kerra once again falls into the role of distant hero to most sylvari. However, the key difference here is Kerra’s influence on the Dream. She’s still only one sylvari, despite the impact she’s made. But she’s a key figure, and popular, and her feelings towards the Pale Mother manage to slip into the Dream. She doesn’t see their Mother as a god or an omniscient leader, but instead as a parent who made and continues to make mistakes. Kerra is most certainly not the first sylvari to feel this way, nor will she be the last. But the imprint she, in particular, leaves on the Dream means that some newly awakened saplings are...less reverent than in the past, let’s say. And some question Ventari’s teachings by holding her up as an example.

The saplings adore her (or at least the idea of her--its distance from the actual Commander varies), and the menders are torn between exasperation, anger, and grudging respect. She rises in their estimation when, after being away for a few years after Mordremoth’s defeat, she returns to the Grove post-LWS4 once every week as a “guest lecturer” of sorts.