#salad-commander

Ive’s beef with the Grove, and more specifically the Pale Tree, started a loooong time back.  As in it started developing as soon as he awakened.  Ive spent his time in the Dream wanting to explore and see the world, to hell with an actual Wyld Hunt because there’s a world to be found.  But he emerged blind, and all of the sudden he couldn’t see the world.  This turned into anger and depression because absolutely no one could answer this for him - not even the Pale Tree, who gave him a canned answer about how everyone has a purpose and that he would rise above it.  

He doesn’t hate the fact that he’s blind, he hates the fact that it happened for seemingly no reason and with no precedence.  He hates the fact that the people who professed to care about him (the Luminaries, the menders, the Pale Tree) simply repeated the same things over and over again, about how he had to be strong and everything happens for a reason.  He hates that people he did not know whispered behind his back, wondering how the “blind Valiant” would ever finish his Hunt, and how every mentor Kahedins tried to assign to him to keep him under control would coddle him and tell him they would take it slow to make sure he would not miss anything.

All he really wanted was an answer.  Even though he knew and eventually accepted that there really wasn’t one, those negative emotions stewed for a very long time when he was newly awakened, and they stuck.  He associates the Grove with a time where he was depressed and angry and confused, where his only saving grace was his sister Devnet, who knew him well enough to know what needed to be said.  He also spent a short amount of time mentored by Trahearne, who planned on having Ive with him upon his next journey to Orr.  When the Pale Tree chose Ive to be a delegate to one of the three Orders of Tyria and convinced Trahearne to let his student go, Ive was less than happy about this.  It turned out for the better, of course, but Ive was suffocating under the influence of a mother figure whom he already distrusted due to her tendency to speak in metaphor and inability (or refusal) to tell him the answers he wanted to know.  Stack on the fact that Devnet was nearly killed by Mazdak the Accursed when they were recovering Caladbolg and you get a little salad child who can only associate the Grove with pain and fear and sadness.

That really begs the question as to why he’s not Soundless or Nightmare (besides his lack of patience to be Soundless and disagreements with the Court).  Both reasons were already mentioned: Devnet and Trahearne.  They are the only two sylvari that he cares about, and both are stalwart Dreamers.  He stays for them, because Devnet means the world to him, and because Trahearne honestly cares for and respects him.  They are friends he doesn’t want to lose, people he respects and relies on.  He wants to be independent, but he doesn’t want to be alone.

Fast forward to Heart of Thorns.  The Pact, full of people whom he cares for and who respect him, is in shambles.  The man he loves is dead by his own hand.  He feels like he’s sacrificed everything for people that he has no affection for and who could not care less about him.  He’s wondering if Mordremoth is actually gone and sees (metaphorically) all the sylvari who survived (including himself), and wonders why Trahearne had to die.  He knows that the Pale Tree was in bad shape after the World Summit, but he’s burned himself out blaming himself and he’s still angry.  He’s confused, broken, and only has his friends to keep him buoyant.  Everything is falling apart, and yet off in the distance, the Grove is mostly untouched.  It is an idyllic haven that suddenly seems exponentially more superficial.  Ive can’t help it.  The Grove is a lot of empty promises, false pity, and naive optimism.  And he’s had enough of that.

Is it childish?  Yes, probably.  But Ive never claimed to be wise or learned.  He has accepted life as it was given to him, but that does not stop him from feeling spite and loneliness when he thinks of the Grove and the Pale Tree.  He hates how empty he feels when he’s there, and how envious he is of the sylvari there with their blissful happiness and security.  It’s a vicious little cycle of self-loathing and he’s very aware of it.

Because I’m enamored by the Reaper playstyle and I have one necromancer. TOO SENTIMENTAL TO MAKE ANOTHER ONE.

But I guess characterwise I must confess I haven’t exactly worked out the transition, but Dreiton, like many other necromancers I’m assuming, are somewhat familiar with the Reaper arts. When Dreiton was a young sapling he was on the path to becoming a mighty Reaper along with his former beloved. However after that powerlust along with such an unruly magic got the better of Dreiton causing him to become much more violent and aggressive. After the falling out, he completely turned the other leaf from his arrogant youth, he refined his practice to the magical and spell oriented side of necromancy, more specifically curses, spells, incantations with spirits, and hexes. 

With the events of HoT in coming to rise, Dreiton took it upon himself to put up the scepter and dagger, changing his ways to tailor that old Reaper magic he sought after many years ago. The reasoning behind this is because he would need something more stronger to stop the forces of Mordremoth and help preserve Tyria with what little scraps of The Pact that is left. Hoping that his emotional and mental wisdom and maturity would keep him on the straight and narrow, Dreiton began to train and work on his Reaper skills.

Interesting to note is Dreiton talked over the situation with the Reaper magic with Tenebrae and gave him orders to keep him in line if anything went awry. Why Tenebrae? Because in a previous post, Tenebrae is Dreiton’s little coin purse for Life Force and if he’s too aggressive or demanding of that life force, Tenebrae would need to stop him and settle him down.

That’s IF he starts to loose control. Although he’s sure of himself that he’s older, wiser, and knows his limits...he’s still very worried about what happened in the past would happen again. If it were just himself and Tenebrae he would be more comfortable with the matter. But because this is a dire situation and he has people he really cares about holding onto his hand (and a new bae), old fears are hard to shake.

Reaper Dreiton is stronger physically by far and relentless in pursuing a target, however at the cost of being physically exhausted more frequently and lost in thought at times.