#also if anyone more knowledgeable about sylvari lore knows if there's a canon way turned sylvari address mordremoth

[fleetingmirage]

I had the dubious urge to practice line drawing, which was (as it tends to be for me) a horrible mistake. You can clearly see the parts I lost patience with and just started painting over, hahaha...ha.

Anyway. The idea for this one is it is right after the fleet of Pact ships, lead by Trahearne, is disabled by Mordremoth's vines. I always enjoyed the idea of a Mordremoth-corrupted Malyck, under the Jungle Dragon's orders, being the one who finds him among the rubble. Our poor Firstborn is alone and disoriented (or maybe Malyck/other Mordrem have picked off any nearby survivors).

Malyck, pulling an injured Trahearne from the battered remains of his ship, tells him with vicious delight how his beloved Pact is vanquished. Not only that, but any survivors have surely abandoned him, after his foolish order to fire into the forests of Mordremoth's domain.

"Your Pact is gone, Marshal. You led them right into the Heart of Maguuma."

Malyck triumphantly presents Trahearne to Mordremoth - certain the Firstborn will soon turn and join them, given his weakened mental state due to his failure to protect the Pact.

[raxgond]

@gw2commanderweek​

COMMANDER WEEK: ORIGINS

My entry is a little late because the artwork wound up taking more time than I hoped it would! The post for the Commander Week event says that late entries are totally fine though - so hopefully it’s okay I’m posting this a day later than it should be!

So before I launch into an explanation of how this image applies to the theme, I first would like to state that my canonical commander character seen here (Cento - this isn’t his full in-game name) is actually something of a co-commander with two other characters of my own (who I’m going to call Rea and Lyri for short). Cento is one of my oldest characters, dating long before I ever played / signed up to GW2, so his in-game version is basically a Tyrian AU of my original character. His backstory is loosely based off of that, but modified to fit into GW2′s overall lore / story / setting instead!

Some of the things I’m going to be revealing in this post I’ve literally never told anyone about concerning his storyline / backstory / character. Trigger / content warning for abuse / trauma / (possible ableism / racist) themes below the Read More.

Where does your Commander come from? What were their goals and aspirations?

Cento is an asura, and like many of them, was born in Rata Sum and “destined for greatness,” as it were. As a young progeny, he had originally set his sights on studying the Eternal Alchemy, as its inner mechanisms of the world largely fascinated him, and he hoped to one day attend the College of Synergetics so that he might understand more of the very fabric of reality. However, things didn’t really turn out that way...

How did they grow up? Who influenced them when they were young and impressionable?

The asura and sylvari have quite a bit of history together, unfortunately. It all started with the firstborn sylvari, Malomedies, whose brilliant mind was torn apart, according to Caithe, by the asura and their unparalleled quest for knowledge. Their ruthlessness and cruelty is one of the incidences that went on to inspire secondborn Cadeyrn to found the Nightmare Court, to break free of the shackles of Ventari’s Tablet; after all, why should the sylvari have to follow these teachings, when other races clearly did not? Being naive meant you’d be taken advantage of. Trampled on. The Nightmare Court wanted to infect the Dream with their poison, so that their race as a whole could see with clarity the reality of the world, and ascend to their true purpose, not the chains of an outdated centaur they had never even known.

While there are some members of the Nightmare Court far more noble, and think they are in the right, who only wish to help their race as a whole, it is all too true that there are many who simply delight in tormenting others, and causing pain and suffering where-ever they may go. A group of some such courtiers sprang up, remembering the injustices done to their people by the asura, and targeted one of the labs in which the progeny were learning their first lessons. Cento was amongst this group, and fell victim to the Nightmare Court’s wrath, trapped as a prisoner for years within their clutches and subjected to their various tortures until he was finally freed by another group of sylvari whose Wyld Hunt was to liberate those taken by the court.

This incident continued to shape Cento’s personality and mental health state over the years, as well as his fellow remaining trauma-survivors, those who hadn’t succumbed to the wounds and the pain inflicted on their bodies, proving too much for their grasp on this world. Unfortunately, what had happened took a toll on him, and the previous course he’d set out for his life was too triggering for him to pursue. Instead of joining the College of Synergetics, he decided to enroll in Statics, instead, and put aside his desire to study the Eternal Alchemy, as it had been one of the reasons his lab group in particular had been targeted. However, due to his C-PTSD symptoms, he struggled to fit into society and his peers around him, feeling distanced from his own kind.

Asura are... often not so gentle when they believe another life form lacks the intelligence that they do. Dissociation can be mistaken for being “air-headed” - and even though Cento was far from being “dull-witted,” as it were, his college-mates didn’t see it that way. Once he’d graduated from Statics, instead of joining a krewe as-is custom for one of the asura race, he decided to embark on his own instead, wanting to remove himself from the asuran culture as there was no-one there he felt close to, like he could trust. Instead, he joined the Durmand Priory, his desire for knowledge not entirely quelled - and was immediately assigned to Magister Sieran, his mentor.

Cento had mixed feelings about the sylvari race as a whole at this point; while it was true his tormentors were of their race, it was equally true that those who had saved him from their clutches were as well. Naturally, Cento was rather wary of Sieran at first, especially when she seemed to detour wildly off the task at hand, but when their “little side-trip” wound up with the two saving a group of kidnapped Priory Explorers, he very quickly warmed up to her, solidly placing her in the same category as his saviors, as he felt she was very much akin to them from her actions that day.

Sieran is the first true friend that Cento ever had, and one of the few that really understood him entirely. She’s the only person in his life up to that point he felt entirely comfortable around, as though he could truly be himself without expectations or worry. It’d be a real shame if anything ever happened to her, wouldn’t it?

About this image/prompt.

Specifically, this image is supposed to be a depiction of Cento’s nightmares, which is why he’s wearing his present-day outfit / is depicted as an adult here instead of a progeny. I also included a target-symbol in the background as symbolism for him being “in the sights” so to speak of those who have ill-intention. The text is asuran script; I’ll be wildly curious to see if anyone manages to translate it.

Furthermore, I’m very sorry if anyone was actually expecting something fun / nice / that this totally went sideways from what the theme was supposed to be. My character’s backstory is obviously not very fun since he’s a trauma survivor and deals with heavy C-PTSD and dissociation. Some of what I wrote here is very vague because it’s not actually my intention to upset anyone. Also, I don’t exactly intend to fully get into all the details of what happened; there’s a lot more to this than what I’ve written down here but I think I’ve said enough for now. Just know that I’ve really thought about his backstory a lot and how his trauma would wind up effecting everything he does and feels. It’s very much a part of his character, and it’s also a bit of a personal subject to me, too.

Also... rip. I think we all know what happens at Claw Island so.

TL;DR honestly Cento is not having a great time. His story’s very chaotic to be honest but also a little therapeutic / cathartic to me for various reasons.