Divinity Original Sin 2: The Ancestor Tree and the Source King

Divinity Original Sin 2’s Reaper’s Coast region contains an Ancestor Tree — a massive ancient tree with faces of sleeping elves visible in its bark — that can be spoken to. Most players pass it as environmental decoration. Speaking to it initiates a dialogue with the accumulated memory of every elf who chose to be absorbed by the tree rather than die and lose their history.

The tree knows the player character’s backstory, as it contains elves who witnessed the events preceding the game. It also knows something the game has not yet told the player: the true identity of the Godwoken’s Sourcerer nemesis, referred to as the ‘Source King’ in tree dialogue, who is not introduced by that title anywhere else in the game until Act 4.

Larian planted a late-game revelation in an optional conversational tree in Act 2. Players who spoke to the Ancestor Tree and filed the Source King reference could not know what to do with that knowledge for the next twenty hours.

The tree also allows an elf companion to absorb the blood of a fallen enemy and receive memories — a mechanic unique to the tree’s area that the game does not explain and has no tutorial. Players who found it accidentally in combat had to reverse-engineer what had happened.