it feels like there's a direct line from the question that kicked off the Shapers War being "why can't I keep my family safe?" and the reveal that Sylandri directly controlled which elves were allowed to have children. between "we were the only people that knew we were doing it without a reward. the land that was promised to us after death was the same as life, just more suffering. endless wasteland, choked by ash and fire." and "an eternity, to have all of your complexity, all of your possibility, all of your dreams folded into an idyllic paradise where you would be punished for the most minor infraction?" no wonder the orcs were the first to kill their god and the elves were the last. whether it was a certainty or not at the time of the Shapers' War, the elves had to know there was at least a chance this rebellion would end in a slow extinction event for their people, and I'm inclined to believe this might be in part the reason they named their god-slaying weapon The Last Arrow. therefore, Vaelus and those who fought for Sylandri were likely asking themselves the same question that motivated the Lloys to build the Pariah Blades.
it's also interesting in the difference between the elves of the Old Path and the practitioners of other races. if the ability to have children was decided to only be granted to the most faithful then elves like Hannan and his wife were foregoing the possibility of ever passing on their traditions to their biological children as the other races of the Old Path could. of course, biological family isn't the only type of family, but it does mean the elven druids had to put themselves in more danger in order to find others who shared their beliefs. there were no generations of secret worship. they had to intentionally seek each other out just to learn about the Path, let alone find community with each other, and if they were discovered, if they confided in the wrong person, they were persecuted the most harshly by their goddess of life and nature.
in the blessing of Azgra, the orcish druid Agari Shadow blesses him most of all for "his honesty, because of all the gods of Aramán, ours was the only one who never lied about what he truly was." Sylandri is initially set up to be seen as the kindest of the Shapers, the Green Mother who allowed her people to live in an eternal paradise even after death, and slowly, that portrayal has been peeled back as we learn more about Vaelus and Hannan to something just as malicious as Azgra. for all his cruelty—and make no mistake, he was cruel and the orcs suffered greatly under him—Azgra did not leave a blight on Kahad as he died, as far as we know. his Barrowdell is deemed the only positive Barrowdell in Aramán. in her final moments, Sylandri was so spiteful thst she damned her people, both those who were faithful to her and those who weren't, to genocide rather than see them flourish without her.
