The White Lady

An artistic rendition of the White Lady.

**The White Lady** is the massive, sentient tree that gave birth to the sylvari. Located south of The Wizard's Coast, the White Lady spirals into the sky, a large city of sylvari grown around its roots. It is by far the largest tree in its forest, having been planted in the First Era; the White Lady had reached full maturity and began producing sylvari by the Third Era.

## Geography

### The Roots

The roots of the White Lady cross throughout kilometers of jungle surrounding the tree, and are an ecosystem all their own, with numerous kinds of life evolving specifically to survive around them. Axebeaks are common in this part of the jungle, and are often tamed by sylvari as pets and mounts.

### The Grove

The Grove is the city that surrounds the White Lady. Grown from the ground up using plants and magic by the sylvari, the Grove spans a sizeable area around the roots of the White Lady, and at some points rising up along the trunk. Most sylvari will spend their first few years of life living in the grove, before making the choice to either leave or to remain there. Around the grove are many puddles, where smaller grovefruit trees are grown to produce food for the population.

### The Heart

The Heart is where the incarnation of the White Lady resides, deep inside the trunk of the tree. Appearing like a beautiful, humanlike spirit, the White Lady's incarnation is tied to the tree she lives in, and hence cannot leave the Heart. However, sylvari and others are allowed to enter and leave as they please, able to communicate with the White Lady. Despite this, the Heart is *extremely* well guarded, to ensure its safety.

### The Nursery

The Nursery is where sylvari are birthed from the amber pods that grow in the White Lady's foliage. When a sylvari is ready to emerge from their pod, they are dropped down to the surface via a vine, where the pod will open and the sylvari will emerge. The area around the White Lady where the amber pods are dropped is treated as a special, almost holy place for the sylvari, where their kind comes into being.

## History

Millenia before life had even appeared on Rosenwelt, the civilization known as The First thrived. Yet, when their home was threatened with ruin and turned into Pandaemonium, their apocalypse nearing, they turned to desperate solutions. Some surrendered and succumbed to the despair of their perfect utopia crumbling, others rejoiced in the destruction and looting, and others still attempted to make their grand escapes. What would one day become the White Lady was one of the latter.

Sagittarius, of the Fourth Council, was a member of the First and one of their foremost leaders on the production of food and other natural resources. When the apocalypse became inevitable, she fell into despair, watching her beautifully crafted world collapse around her. Her groves of forests lit ablaze, her fields of grain poisoned and salted, her lands charred beyond recognition - her life's work obliterated. Sagittarius succumbed to her despair, but not before removing her mask - the symbol of her seat on the council - and imbuing it with her memories, her knowledge, her mind. Everything but her soul lay in the mask, before Sagittarius perished, alongside the billions of other souls that called Pandaemonium home.

Miraculously, however, her mask survived the destruction of their world. Flung into the void between planes, the mask spiraled and flew for centuries, until one day, by a chance even more miraculous than the first, it landed upon Rosenwelt. Two miracles for the poor mask was enough, and yet, a third was still to come.

The White Lady was found sometime in the First Era by a human druid named Ventari. The druid mistook the mask for a giant seed, and as such, chose to plant it. He took care of the seed as it grew, spending his whole life caring for it. From a seedling to a sapling, a sapling to tree, the mask of Sagittarius slowly grew into something it's owner would have loved to witness. As the tree grew, the memories and mind imbued into the mask began to form into a sentience - a living, thinking being within the tree, bearing the memories of Sagittarius but entirely seperate in nature.

The tree continued growing, adopting the teachings of Ventari after his passing, and taking in nutrients from the soil over millenia. She saw the world change and develop around her, feeling the air on her bark change and the sunlight striking her leaves warm her. She bore witness to the rise and fall of countless tribes and civilizations, the births and deaths of countless kings, until - one day - she had matured enough to strike out on her own and explore that world around her. Manifesting herself in a metaphysical form within the tree, what would later become the Dream, the White Lady named herself and began to fashion the first sylvari - her own living, breathing children to tend to the world around her, and to strike out on their own to learn about the universe for her.

## Personality

Being a sentient being, the White Lady has a personality - one that is very peaceful and inquisitive. As she cannot move herself, she uses the sylvari (who are telepathically connected to her at all times) to explore and learn about the world for her, through a system known as The Dream. By doing this and obtaining this new knowledge, the White Lady will be able to raise future sylvari to be more intelligent and know more about the world. She acts caring and affectionate towards the sylvari and other sentient races, treating them as if they are her children and being quite motherly towards those she communicates with, even going as far as to refer to them as "my children." To the White Lady, the world and life around her is sacred, and something she deigns to protect with her life.

The White Lady has shown great apathy in regards to most of the politics and beliefs of older races. She views most discussions of politics and the like as petty squabbles befitting of children. Largely, her only political concerns lie in how much of a threat a group is towards the safety of Rosenwelt as a whole - as such, outside of the Malkenian Imperium, she does not take any nations as threats. Herself - and the sylvari - rarely take interest in foreign affairs, economics, and the like. For the most part, she greatly prefers peace and cooperation over aggression. The only time she will actively order sylvari to engage in violence is either to defend themselves, or when the White Lady and Grove are threatened by outside forces.

## Powers and Abilities

The White Lady has an immense amount of power and skill in many arts. As what is essentially the locus of a rudimentary hive-mind, she retains and has access to the knowledge and individual experiences of all sylvari - however, she also maintains an almost otherworldly intelligence, harboring information and memories unknown to much of the rest of Rosenwelt. Her wisdom gives her great access to advancing her abilities and skills - and, despite being bound to her tree, she is an immensely capable combatant.

Much of the White Lady's skill lies in magic and manipulating Focus. She is a skilled spellcaster, able to use magics on the levels of lesser gods, even to the extent of manifesting her own realm within the tree she resides in and manipulating it. As well, she is a skilled swordswoman, archer, and scholar.

## Notable Settlements

* **The Grove** is the only major settlement around the White Lady. Built around the tree's roots by the sylvari, the Grove is where most sylvari will live and spend their early lives before setting off to explore and learn more for the White Lady.