[MartynThompson]

hey wondeirng if anyone else can see connection with:

Quote

In brighter times, Elonian prides gathered around massive “ancestor trees,” where they believed the spirits of their forebears watched over them. According to arcane scholars, the fruit of these trees was seen as divine, possibly as a way to pass down spiritual wisdom from one generation to the next.

and the "The Dream of Dreams"

Quote

Soon after he was joined by a Centaur called Ventari. Ventari had sought to foster peace among the warring clans of his people but had failed and chosen to seek a place of solitude to live out the rest of his life. It was he who took care of the tree after Ronan's death. Before Ventari died, he wrote down his life's lessons and teachings of peace and harmony on a marble tablet and placed it at the base of the tree. The tablet seems to have had a huge effect on the sylvari's development and thinking.

though the "Ancestor tree" is "spiritual wisdom" and fruit lol
and this is about elonian centaurs

could be abit different.

[pradine]

Sorry, I dont see any connection. I think they are 2 different things.

[Konig Des Todes]

Aside from the tree thing, I don't see a similarity. Though this is mainly due to the Pale Tree's magical area.

If there is a connection, I assume that it'll be something based on plants, and not a direct connection between the two.

[Arghore]

Well I do see a connection, the obvious one i think... 'Elder' tree warshipping/guarding is a commen trait amongst Centaur (Ventari aswell as the Elonian Cantaur 'warship/guard' elder trees) ... apparently these trees are called Elder trees because the 'Elder' centaurs place their live wisdom under a tree they guarded (the tree would be the tree they 'guarded' throughout their life, and with the tablets they would pass on their knowledge to the next generation;

The 'believe' amongst the Centaur apparently is that the tree somehow absorbs the knowledge and it is passed down to other centaurs by eating the fruits of said tree (though Fruit could also be meant as 'Fruit of labour' (being the 'fruits' that the elder gathered (ak knowledge/wisdom) throughout their life), and as such would refer to the Tablets, as this is how the knowledge would realy be passed down to the next generation..

I dont think that the fruits refer to the Sylvari themselves (or have something to do with the dream of dreams), BUT, the process in which the Tablets influenced the Sylvari do seem to line up with the commen centaur believes :), a reason why i think this is a nice find :D

[pumpkin pie]

now that you mention it, it does look like they are the "same thing" after all, the gods of tyria are the same and the human race worship them, and the elonian are human, right, one of the 5 gods (melandru) are in the form of a druid, they could be worshiping the same "tree/thing" without know it.

[Whisper]

pumpkin pie said:

now that you mention it, it does look like they are the "same thing" after all, the gods of tyria are the same and the human race worship them, and the elonian are human, right, one of the 5 gods (melandru) are in the form of a druid, they could be worshiping the same "tree/thing" without know it.

Are we assuming that the sylvari are the incarnations Melandru here?


I deffinently think that the way Ventari influenced the white oak has some connection to the Centaur traditions :).

[ShadowedSin]

Trees represent a lot in mythology. Odin hung from the world tree to gain the knowledge of Futhark. I would not warrant a guess that the Pale Tree was influenced by Ventari in that respect.

[draxynnic]

That is an interesting theory...

It's possible that the trees are related, but I doubt they're the same...unless the Centaurs have been eating baby Sylvari for all this time!

However...what if the ancestor trees are the result of some racial memory of something like the Pale Tree? It's possible that some time in the past the Veldrunner religion was based around Pale Trees, but they turned to the current Ancestor Trees after the Pale Trees and Sylvari died out in Elona?

[Corpsesarefun]

My take on it is that the eldar centaurs before they died spent time carving their teachings and life lessons either into the tree or into stone tablets (the fruit of their lifes labours) which were then left for future generations to see and learn from, ventari simply followed this tradition with the tree he guarded.

[TriggerSad]

If by this you mean that what Ventari did was not actually a sign of great friendship with Ronon, but more like a common Centaur tradition, then I guess...
I mean it would explain why he wrote the tablet as Corpsesarefun posted above me, he was just following tradition. Though it seems kind of funny that if Ventari hadn't followed traditions of how to treat an "Elder" tree, then the Sylvari wouldn't have learned any of their values. Plus since the Asura live so close to them, we would have seen a lot of high and mighty plant slaves. :surprised:
Granted that last bit was just me speculating, nothing serious. ;)

[Konig Des Todes]

Going to resurrect this old thread due to new information.

It may be likely that there's a similarity considering information from the Ghosts of Ascalon novel (not going to bother with spoiler tags due to the amount of time that has passed and it isn't a spoiler to the story) - Killeen says that the sylvari are golden fruit of the Pale Tree, and that the Dream of Dream teaches the sylvari while they're still connected to the tree. Killeen also mentions that the souls of Ventari and Ronan are in the sylvari, passed on to them via the tree.

Likewise, for (elonian - at least) centaurs, they pass knowledge through trees and fruit. It could be that the method of passing on knowledge via the fruit of Ancestor Trees is similar to what happened to Ventari and Ronan - dying and being buried near the tree, and as such one's soul (or at least knowledge) are passed on through the tree then into the fruit. Normally this would apparently produce "fruits of knowledge" (oh, biblical reference), but in this case it gave sylvari the knowledge as they are the Pale Tree's fruits...

Makes me wonder what would happen if someone ate a sylvari...

[X-Seraphim-X]

Konig Des Todes said:

Makes me wonder what would happen if someone ate a sylvari...

I would assume they get their recommended daily allowance of fiber, and have a healthy intestinal tract?

I don't know... I'm not a salad-person. I prefer meat.

Rawr.

[draxynnic]

Konig: There's been a supply problem regarding GoA in Australia - seems the shipment here didn't even cover all the preorders that were made (including mine). Which is probably a good sign for ANet, but it's not exactly pleasant for those who've missed out as a result.

People who want it will probably all have it in a week or so, but it's probably reasonable to keep the moratorium on spoilers running for a little while longer at least.

[Craywulf]

draxynnic said:

People who want it will probably all have it in a week or so, but it's probably reasonable to keep the moratorium on spoilers running for a little while longer at least.

I think the spoiler tag moratorium should stay until the next novel is released.

[Imrahil Greywood]

I dont believe the pale tree is a manifestation of melandru. People have been trying to link up the other races deities with the human gods but i think that there is a just unique deities for each race. If anyone has every read David Eddings he quite often gives different entities different gods i believe that to be the case. The does seem to be some apparent link between the centaurs and trees though it could be little more than coincidence.

draxynnic said:

-snip-

unlcuky i manged to get mine early this month from amazon.

[Marius Klouser]

Connections:
- both are trees
- both stories involve centaurs

Things that don't match:
- Ronan planted the seed

The latter overshadows the other two.

As for Ventari (as much as I like him as a character) he didn't had much to do with the sylvari at first, merely taking care of a tree, special only because of his friend Ronan. The fact that Ventari influenced the sylvari with his tablet is another story.