On Sylvari and Wyld Hunts
Imagine spending your first months of life fully aware of yourself and family, learning of the world you're about to be born into, the teachings of those who raised your mother in turn are gently laid out by imagined replicas of themselves to any who sit and listen. It's a gentle way to be born, already knowing friendly faces and the simpler elements of life. And it's how a fair amount of sylvari enter Tyria, but it's not how all of them awaken is it?
Most titles are gained through professions or deeds performed. Titles are proof of prowess and who you are. Except one. Valiant is not an adjective among sylvari, it is a title for a select group given upon birth. You do not earn it and you can not obtain it later in life. It is the product of those who experienced something far more specific yet ephemeral in the Dream than most, a vision telling them of a great trial they must overcome or a goal they must achieve. A Wyld Hunt they will accomplish.
At least, a task they're expected to accomplish. These Hunts are depicted as anything is in the dream, images and interpretations. No one truly knows how the Dream works. How it chooses Valiants, how it lays everything out and seems to know events that have not yet passed so clearly. Even the Pale Tree herself may only guess and interpret the meanings by her own understandings and sometimes a clear answer may only appear when it is already passing. But it is an honor to be chosen for these Hunts nonetheless, marked by a title that shows the bravery and determination surely needed to follow your destiny.
An honor, to be chosen for a duty that protects those connected to the Dream and the world around it. An honor to save a brother with the shape of the moon grown into his shield. An honor to retrieve a truly unique embodiment of the Dream taken form as a stag. An honor to protect your siblings from a "knight" gone too far. An honor to fell a dragon...to cleanse an entire region full of magics you don't yet understand, with a history you can hardly comprehend...to fell a lich...to hide an unbearable truth from those who would trust you most...
Being a Valiant is an honor...right? That's what the Pale Tree told them.
A Hunt can be simple too of course. A Valiant founded the Wardens, a Valiant saved saplings from the Nightmare Court, a Valiant worked to repair damage done by the Inquest. These make the majority of Hunts recieved, not everyone has to save the world to be honored. But some do, don't they? Some need to spearhead the challenges no one would volunteer for, and in that fear of insurmountable danger can you blame those who wouldn't?
Being a Valiant is an honor, truly. It marks those who will step up to protect others until their dying breath. As they were told they would from the moment they were born. It's honored by the Grove that remembers the names of their fallen siblings, the Pale Tree who mourns her lost children, and by the sword now potentially wielded by the third Valiant to hold it. It's an honor, a necessary one. Who would step up to do these things otherwise, would anyone have proper warning without the Dream sending these premonitions and duties?
I have to wonder though. In these 30 years of living, did the sylvari misinterpret these dreams and warnings? How did Valiants come to be, by the decision of the firstborns each with their own Hunts realizing they'd need to handle these individually to cover them all? Why did no one, when the number of sylvari grew, think that perhaps...help was needed?
We see Trahearne, fresh back from Orr unused to interacting with those he was born knowing. We see Riannoc, abandoned by the only person who fought alongside him, a mere boy who was looking for adventure. In honesty that boy was likely older than Riannoc himself. We see Caithe weighed down by an unfinished Hunt, encouraged to train what she and the Pale Tree see as her replacement upon failure. Someone new to defeat Zhaitan in her place.
But is that really what's going on? Is the Dream's first repeated Hunt a fallacy of the Valiant who first carried it, or is it something that couldn't properly be shown without words? How do you teach someone that they need help when they've spent their life ready to go in alone?
There's a tragedy in the title of Valiant, a trail of bodies. Always alone. There's memorials for Valiants, each fighting for what they were born to do, alone. We hear of solely them, not their family or friends there with them. How many tragedies have come from Valiants we haven't even seen, who never came home? How many either died, or are ashamed of their failure in an insurmountable destiny? And how many could have been avoided, with a little less honor and a little more help?
We don't understand the Dream fully, it's hard to know if even the Pale Tree does. But I have to wonder if it's gentler than we see it, if it weeps for those who took its warnings as a weight to bear alone despite being born among friends.
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