Guild Wars 2

It’s assumed that Asura are mammals, because they have bellybuttons, and thus must reproduce using live birth. But, neither the male nor the female Asura have nipples, so it can either be assumed they have no mammary glands (which would make sense due to no bump beyond the pectoral muscle) or instead of nipples, they secrete milk through pores like platypuses.

So, how do they feed their children? Are the children born with the rows of sharp teeth, making them able to eat the fungus in caves and meat? Or is it the milk-pores theory?

How do you know they have bellybuttons? I still think they are lizards. Livebearing lizards…. With ears

considering their anatomy (narrow pelvis, huge cranium) it is impossible for them to give life birth other then in the same manner as marsupials (offspring is born no bigger then a baby rat and grows in a pouch). it would be anatomically impossible to pass that large cranium through the birth canal otherwise.

however, female asuras don’t seem to possess any pouches nor anything that would remind of mammary glands.

i know anet stated asuras are mammals, however, i find it a biological impossibility since they lack any traits that make mammals into… mammals.

i like to think that asuras are essentially reptilian-like and either lay eggs or give semi-life birth. but by this time they are probably genetically engineering every single asura anyway.

it would also explain their disconnection in psychology. aka an animal that was not reared on mother’s milk will not have a deep psychological connection to his or her biological parents, essentially eliminating the need for a family as we know it.
asuras don’t seem to have families or marriages, and they put no interest in biological closeness (brothers, sisters). krewe is the only solid social structure that exists in their society and it pulls individuals based on their interests and intelect, not biological ties.

There is a clothing glitch that allows one to see their character model ‘naked’ in a ken and barbie sort of manner. Their pants are just typically too high up for it to be seen.

Seen here: http://imageshack.us/a/img11/6458/bellybuttonasura.png (Cropped some bits just in case.)

Thus, live birth. Also, if you’ve seen the in-character model of progeny.. they are very, very small. And you can be amazed by the complexities of childbirth and all the adjusting that can, and needs to be, done. But that’s beside the point.

>asuras don’t seem to have families or marriages, and they put no interest in biological closeness (brothers, sisters).

This is also untrue. Asura have a very close-knit familial structure, and recognize extended family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and take good care of their children, helping them get the best education that they can.

See here: http://secretagentcat.com/2011/09/12/in-the-mind-of-genius/

And here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Asura

“Asura have a strong sense of family and extended family, they affectionately refer to their children as “progeny” or “offspring”. They also venerate their parents, and grandparents. Asura traditionally cremate their dead."

so your expecting anatomical correctness?

none of the other races are anatomically correct.
oh yes there are two orbs in front of the various females(including the plants for some reason)
but I doubt they are being modeled with the necessary plumbing to actually feed a child. that would just be weird.
The Norn males are not modeled with low swinging timber yet plot wise they reproduce the same as all mammals. Saying they are not mammals simply because the female Asura are not “endowed” is silly.

and as far as family is concerned they have a very strong sense of family just read the background
http://www.arena.net/blog/angel-mccoy-on-writing-asura

and as far as the narrow pelvis huge cranium…..please study basic human anatomy and evolution, human children are born half formed because if children were born fully formed they would not fit through the pelvis, Asura more then likely fit the same mold. The undeveloped cranium of a human child makes it possible for the child to be born at all in addition it also helps allow the brain to develop later on as well.

basically you cannot really tell the Asuran anatomy because technically all of the models for all of the races are ken and barbie dolls.

The question is awkwardly phrased because the OP isn’t actually asking about reproduction, he/she is asking about progeny and nutrition. For all intents and purposes asura are mammals, so the question actually being asked is whether or not baby asura suckle, and if not, how do they obtain their nutrition?

The milk pore theory is pretty interesting, though…

Yollm.2951:

There is a clothing glitch that allows one to see their character model ‘naked’ in a ken and barbie sort of manner. Their pants are just typically too high up for it to be seen.

Seen here: http://imageshack.us/a/img11/6458/bellybuttonasura.png (Cropped some bits just in case.)

Thus, live birth. Also, if you’ve seen the in-character model of progeny.. they are very, very small. And you can be amazed by the complexities of childbirth and all the adjusting that can, and needs to be, done. But that’s beside the point.

gg you shouldn’t look at them when they are shrunk in their school. Usually they are not big but still half an adult asura? joke

And I still like my lizzard idea And yeah afaik reptiles don’t breast-feed their offspring so this question would be magically solved. They get fed mushrooms and loads of lessons on astrophysics and golemancy.

http://suite101.com/article/snake-reproduction-live-bearing-and-egg-laying-a304911

Yollm.2951:

Also, if you’ve seen the in-character model of progeny.. they are very, very small.

that’s not entirely true.

it seems that female models have a small head that i would call as “passable”, yet male child models have a huge head, half the size of their entire body. that would not be possible. no matter how “complex” you think child bearing is.

Yeah, my question is a little weird, though it does all tie in to the Asuran reproduction and then nursing methods. Right now, I typically assume the children are just born with fully-formed or nearly-formed teeth, thus the ability to eat meat and the lack of need for mammary glands or pores. And using Norn to try to determine the anatomical correctness of an Asura is a little.. hard. Norn are basically humans but larger, so we can assume their anatomy is similar to our own. With nipples, etc. Asura are a completely different thing.

We know Asura have outward genitalia, and no nipples. We know they have bellybuttons, and thus have live birth. What we do not know is how they feed their children.

If they have live birth, they lean towards mammalian, but the lack of mammary glands, seen in that not even the male Asura have nipples, even with certain armor sets like Pit Fighter, which can allow nipples to be seen on their male Norn and Human, lends more to their other reptilian or shark-like attributes.

I’ve always thought that, being a subterranean race, they were like.. shark-moles.

As for the childbirth situation, I doubt those are newly-born progeny running around in Metrica. They are more likely a few years old, old enough to be in school, and have had time to develop in size. Even as they’ve developed though, they are still quite small, and thus must have been pretty darn tiny when first being born.

And the Sylvari have ‘orbs’ in front of them due to being based on the anatomy of humans, but that is beside the point.

If Asura do not possess mammary glands, then why would they cover their chests? The female player character with armour removed and tourists in Southsun Cove keep their chests covered, and I can’t think of any other likely reason as to why that is if not because displaying their mammaries publicly is a social taboo.

Panzerjaeger.7612:

If Asura do not possess mammary glands, then why would they cover their chests? The female player character with armour removed and tourists in Southsun Cove keep their chests covered, and I can’t think of any other likely reason as to why that is if not because displaying their mammaries publicly is a social taboo.

That’s not so much an in-game reason as it is a real-life reason.

You can’t have bare-chested females in a Teen rated game, regardless of actually chesticles.

Basically what Oglaf said. Goodness knows poor Anet would be swamped with claims of it being ‘perverted’ despite nothing on the chests to suggests nipples or anything they need to hide.

Good point, although there are those certain armours that, due to males and female having the same armour skins, leave the chest bare on Asura females, and nobody seems to say much about those, at least from what I’ve seen.

Yollm.2951:

Basically what Oglaf said. Goodness knows poor Anet would be swamped with claims of it being ‘perverted’ despite nothing on the chests to suggests nipples or anything they need to hide.

it’s about the race being too child-like, and god forbid some pervert might see that breastless child-sized asura!

anyway, back to the topic.

yes, the asuran children we encounter are most likely a few years old, however, the cranium can not possibly develop at a much faster phase then the rest of the body. it would not be favoured by evolution due to a lack of balance and coordination such a body would experience.

if you look at human children you will see that a newborn’s head is 1/4 of it’s entire body. this is because cranium is the most difficult body part to grow, it takes the longest and so children must come with the maximum head size they can get away with.
by the time you’re an adult the head/body ratio is down to 1/8 because your head can’t possibly catch up with such growth.
there’s also other factors involved: such as balance. a person with a too large a head relative to his/her body would have a hard time running and getting away from danger.

so by comparing development of human children to asuran children one can presume that head/body ratio was even larger at birth then it is a few years later in school.

and so i still say they can not possibly give life birth unless in the same manner as marsupials.
but then… where’s the pouch?

If there’s no pouch, it has to be typical live birth. Maybe a baby Asura head is much softer than a baby Human head during birth? If there is a pouch that we just can’t see than.. I don’t know, I guess it’s that.

And yeah, there are armors to show off the female Asura chest too, and this also shows the lack of nipples.

Basically, the gist of it is.. we don’t really know anything about Asura anatomy for certain.

I guess we just have to wait for Anet to get around doing proper female Asuran armour rather than lazily copy-pasting the male models. Perhaps they get tiny little bras or something. Now, I don’t expect it to be as sexualized and revealing as the other races but for Cthulhu’s sake they could at least show some difference! They managed to do it with Charr females; the armour mainly looks the same but a lot slimmer for females.

As for the whole birthing issues: perhaps they pull a Stewie Griffin :the head is more rounded in a ball shape and then after a while “plops” into the traditional Asura shape as the infant ages!

Twill.6217:

considering their anatomy (narrow pelvis, huge cranium) it is impossible for them to give life birth

Don’t forget, we are Asura. We are not going to let ourselves be bound by bookah biology.

We can overcome this problem with 3 simple words… miniature Asura gates.

This device would have an adjustable diameter, so can start out small, then expand in diameter to match the size of the baby’s head.

Fertility krewes can simply use MAGs to port newborn babies from the womb directly into their mother’s arms.

Honestly though, I don’t see Asuran mothers even wanting to engage in the inefficient process of carrying babies to term.

It is simply too much of drain on their productivity, and a burden to their Krewe.

I believe they would opt to have babies developed outside the body, within Incubation Golems.

Human children sometimes are born with cone-shaped heads since their head is so soft, it deforms during the birthing process.

Since Asura have such strong brains, maybe their heads are really ‘gummy’ so they can deform more at that stage. Furthermore, Asura may even have developed ‘baby helmets’ to help reform the shape of the baby’s head to something more attractive as they develop in the first few weeks.

Um I always thought they were mutated bunny rabbits…just without the fuzzy tail.

Rabbit mix with reptile?

Since Anet created the lore, if they say Asura are mammals and they reproduce similair to humans then that’s the way it is, period. And it’s not impossible, don’t try to apply real life logic to a fantasy game

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

don’t try to apply real life logic to a fantasy game

Haha I know what you mean, but some people always want to do comparative stuff especially on fantasy / anthro beings.

Leo G.4501:

Human children sometimes are born with cone-shaped heads since their head is so soft, it deforms during the birthing process.

Since Asura have such strong brains, maybe their heads are really ‘gummy’ so they can deform more at that stage. Furthermore, Asura may even have developed ‘baby helmets’ to help reform the shape of the baby’s head to something more attractive as they develop in the first few weeks.

there is no need for helmets, gravity does it’s trick all by itself.

however, there is a limit how much a tissue can stretch and so mother can only give birth to a head that’s only so large. else she risks massive internal ripping, bleeding and even death.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Since Anet created the lore, if they say Asura are mammals and they reproduce similair to humans then that’s the way it is, period. And it’s not impossible, don’t try to apply real life logic to a fantasy game

Do you have a source? I only found a statement saying that they give birth the way humans do. That does in my opinion mean they are live-bearing. It does however say nothing about if they are really mammals.

Personally, it all seems so… flat.

They are not tiny humans, nor miniature norn.

Don’t limit them to something a blah as live birth or laying eggs… no, they are far more competitive and interesting than that.

The Asura (IMHO) should reproduce by collecting the egg of a large egglaying creatures such as the Raptor, Drake, Moa or even Destroyer.
Replacing the egg’s embryo with their own offspring, the Progeny develops inside the hijacked egg until it can break free.. shortly after the teeth have developed.

P.S. This could still work within the Lore as stated. Like a marsupial, they could give live birth to a very underdeveloped “joey” that invades the egg and finishes developing there.

In the distant past, before Asura became fully sentient, I suspect the embryo would be deposited and then abandoned. Strong Progeny would then consume the rest of the nest mates before heading out to seek out other prey.

How on could that possible work? Were proto-Asurans created with the scientific know-how and equipment to do so?

It makes no sense, and to be honest, it is pretty stupid.

What? Why not?

Haven’t you heard of insects who lay their young in other species? The insects larvae eat the eggs to reach the next phase of development.
There is also Brood Parasitism, where one bird deposits it’s eggs in another nest, where it pushes the other chicks out of the nest.

This is a little different. Obviously the “joey” or the Asura female can breach the egg shell with enzymes (reptile eggs are soft and leathery, not a hard shell like a chicken) and repair the breach. A Red kangaroo is the size and weight of a Norn, 6’7" and 200lbs, yet the Joey is the size of a jelly bean at birth. So that makes the Asura “joey” even smaller, say a ladybug.

The “Joey” is now free to consume the contents of the egg from the inside.

Sick, gross, brutal and kinda funny in a way…

a sick, gross and brutal way.

I don’t remember exactly where it was in Rata Sum, but a week or so ago, I encountered a NPC conversation discussing the pride in watching their progeny growing up as greatly exceeding the pain of childbirth. Next time I am able to get on for a long enough period of time to sit around and listen to NPC dialog, I will try to find it again for proof, but I can definitely say that Asura females give live birth instead of the "joey"or “egg” theory (though they are both very interesting alternatives and give me ideas for a race in a game I’ve been making up in my spare time)

Get a screenie if you can to once and for all resolve this.

Yes! It’s the same NPC convo that Zaxares was talking about in another thread. If we can get a screenshot of it, it’ll be a case closed. I’ll see if I can find it, too.

I think it was from the Tixx event, actually..

Here: http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2056/gw840.jpg

YAAAAY!

well that was an odd thing to include for a casual conversation.

but it doesn’t prove anything. i stand by my statement that female asuras are not anatomically equipped for child baring in the same manner as humans. they could only do it as marsupials at best.

Yollm.2951:

I think it was from the Tixx event, actually..

Here: http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2056/gw840.jpg

The day Yollm solved a great mystery forever.

Twill.6217:

well that was an odd thing to include for a casual conversation.

but it doesn’t prove anything. i stand by my statement that female asuras are not anatomically equipped for child baring in the same manner as humans. they could only do it as marsupials at best.

I would like to know your logic behind that. Progeny are the asura equivalent of children (ie: 4 to 12 years old). Within the two years of birth, Human babies can double in size, and whats stopping Asuran infants from doing the same thing? Just because Anet chose not to upload the pixels for certain anatomy that is believed to be “necessary” for similar childbearing to humans doesn’t mean it isn’t there. ( I don’t want to seem confrontational, I was just stating the logic behind my own thinking)

Well, I think the idea of Asura beeing marsupials is not that much likely but how cute would that be! Imagine little Asura babies sticking out their heads of their mothers pouch having highly intellectual conversations while mom is building up a new golem

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, I think the idea of Asura beeing marsupials is not that much likely but how cute would that be! Imagine little Asura babies sticking out their heads of their mothers pouch having highly intellectual conversations while mom is building up a new golem

Gaaaaaahhhh that is adorable.

It’s always funny to see people try to discuss anatomy of literary characters.

Quit hurting yourselves. They are not bound by our real life logic, the vague resemblance is not a sign of logic, merely the whims of their creators. ArenaNet.

Lol, I see this as a game. Speculating can be fun, finding logical solutions for some questions which do not get answered directely by the game. It has quite alot to do with immersion, with feeling home in this world and not with somehow confusing real world and fiction. You can call it “nerdy” or what else, but I personally am not taking this overly serious.

DreamOfACure.4382:

It’s always funny to see people try to discuss anatomy of literary characters.

Quit hurting yourselves. They are not bound by our real life logic, the vague resemblance is not a sign of logic, merely the whims of their creators. ArenaNet.

> implying that speculative discussion is somehow “hurting ourselves”

I don’t think anyone in this thread or any other speculative thread pretty much ever has been really invested in the discourse. This type of discussion is actually pretty fun, and that’s how most see it. If you want to roll your eyes and dismissively go “silly little people arguing about fictional things” without grasping what threads like these are really about (i.e. people discussing a theory they find interesting), then that’s fine, but I honestly don’t understand why you actively posted about it.

There’s literally no point in coming into a discussion and going “this is stupid”, and that’s exactly what you did. Think before you post.

Rilke Cadmus.6829:

Twill.6217:

well that was an odd thing to include for a casual conversation.

but it doesn’t prove anything. i stand by my statement that female asuras are not anatomically equipped for child baring in the same manner as humans. they could only do it as marsupials at best.

I would like to know your logic behind that. Progeny are the asura equivalent of children (ie: 4 to 12 years old). Within the two years of birth, Human babies can double in size, and whats stopping Asuran infants from doing the same thing? Just because Anet chose not to upload the pixels for certain anatomy that is believed to be “necessary” for similar childbearing to humans doesn’t mean it isn’t there. ( I don’t want to seem confrontational, I was just stating the logic behind my own thinking)

because the size of your cranium at birth determines how long it will take for brain to develop into adulthood.
smaller brain at birth = dumber babies = longer childhood
this is already obvious in human children who take disproportionaly long time to develop into adults, when compared to other mammals.

an elephant can live to be over 70 years old, but they reach adulthood at the age of 10.
humans have a similar life span but they reach full adulthood at ages between 18 and 25.
this is directly related to the brain size on the day of birth.

so there is no way asura could be geniuses at the age of 4. their brains simply would lack development power for that just yet.

Thank you for your evidence, it is certainly food for thought, we must now wait for a response from Anet to resolve the issue.

Humans have bigger brains than chimps during the foetal stage but chimps perform better at IQ tests during the first 2 years of life. Then the chimp mental potential plateaus and humans surpass them. chimps also develope into adulthood sooner.

“What’s really unique about us is that our brains experience rapid establishment of connectivity in the first two years of life,” said Chet Sherwood, an evolutionary neuroscientist at George Washington University, who was not involved in the study. “That probably helps to explain why those first few years of human life are so critical to set us on the course to language acquisition, cultural knowledge and all those things that make us human.” http://www.livescience.com/25655-chimp-brains-reveal-human-intelligence.html

So asura may experiance extremely rapid establishment of connectivity.

Dustfinger.9510:

Humans have bigger brains than chimps during the foetal stage but chimps perform better at IQ tests during the first 2 years of life. Then the chimp mental potential plateaus and humans surpass them. chimps also develope into adulthood sooner.

“What’s really unique about us is that our brains experience rapid establishment of connectivity in the first two years of life,” said Chet Sherwood, an evolutionary neuroscientist at George Washington University, who was not involved in the study. “That probably helps to explain why those first few years of human life are so critical to set us on the course to language acquisition, cultural knowledge and all those things that make us human.” http://www.livescience.com/25655-chimp-brains-reveal-human-intelligence.html

So asura may experiance extremely rapid establishment of connectivity.

there is still a very finite amount of connections a brain can manage.
this is also one of the reasons that humans don’t seem to be getting any smarter then they already are – we are limited by our biology in that neurons can only make so many different connections.
also, there’s an issue of power supply. a biological cell can carry a finite amount of resources.
our own braisn already consume 20% of resources.
if asuran brain consumes lets say 30%, not only would it stall physical growth, it would stall the growth of brain itself….

there is still a very finite amount of connections a brain can manage.
this is also one of the reasons that humans don’t seem to be getting any smarter then they already are – we are limited by our biology in that neurons can only make so many different connections.
also, there’s an issue of power supply. a biological cell can carry a finite amount of resources.
our own braisn already consume 20% of resources.
if asuran brain consumes lets say 30%, not only would it stall physical growth, it would stall the growth of brain itself….

We don’t know the limit of human connections, let alone the limit of asura. We may be limited by our biology but asura aren’t. They are limited by their own unknown biology the same way chimps and humans have diffrent limits. You bring to mind an image of a chimp arguing with another that humans can’t have as rapid an establishment of connections that humans have becasue chimps don’t have that capability.

We also know that asura eat "brain food’ and expect noticible results from just one meal.

if asuran brain consumes lets say 30%, not only would it stall physical growth….

think about that :P

Frankly, the major reason we don’t see nipples on Asura females is less a matter of bio-logic, and much more a matter of Dev-logic. Namely, they did not want the same troubles as were given to TERA Online’s Dev-krewe for the inclusion of: skimpy wardrobe on the Elin race. At least that’s been my guess from Word Go.
Unfortunate in a way: Asura Magitech … I would’ve just hand-waved birthing completely, and went with artificial wombs. Or clonetech, like SG1’s Asgard.

My guess is that they give birth to live young. No nipples? Since there haven’t been any official images of the different races in the nude, we can’t assume any of the races have nipples.

I think they left the models as Ken and Barbie models, vague bumps in the right places.

Food for thought: Remember in Star Trek VI when Kirk kicks the large alien in the knees?

pdboddy.4162:

My guess is that they give birth to live young. No nipples? Since there haven’t been any official images of the different races in the nude, we can’t assume any of the races have nipples.

I think they left the models as Ken and Barbie models, vague bumps in the right places.

Food for thought: Remember in Star Trek VI when Kirk kicks the large alien in the knees?

“Not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain.” Such a classic, that one.
Too bad Iman got out of the movie game: I still would’ve put her as Storm in the original 3 X-Men films over Halle Berry.

http://guildwars2.pl/about_lore_and_mechanics_with_eric_flannum_guildwarspl_exclusive,a545

Q: How easy it will be to determine the gender of Asura characters? Do female Asura have breasts?

Eric: Asura are mammals and female asura do have mammary glands, however they are not particularly prominent the way they are in humans or norn. For the sake of physical attraction, asura place much more importance on the ears, eyes, and shape of the head (larger head equals larger cranial capacity of course!) than anything else. As for telling the genders apart, female asura tend to have much softer and fine features than males and wear their hair differently.

Yollm.2951:

http://guildwars2.pl/about_lore_and_mechanics_with_eric_flannum_guildwarspl_exclusive,a545

Q: How easy it will be to determine the gender of Asura characters? Do female Asura have breasts?

Eric: Asura are mammals and female asura do have mammary glands, however they are not particularly prominent the way they are in humans or norn. For the sake of physical attraction, asura place much more importance on the ears, eyes, and shape of the head (larger head equals larger cranial capacity of course!) than anything else. As for telling the genders apart, female asura tend to have much softer and fine features than males and wear their hair differently.

/thread, everybody go home. And you, Yollm, you get a medal for finding this, it’ll help me a great deal with the roleplay guide.

There’s one fact that you guys are grievously overlooking: Asura are not human. Some comparisons can be made due to similarities but you also have to acknowledge that they are radically different from humans so it’s highly likely that they grow and have evolved in a radically different way.

For instance, females may still have mammary glands but they just don’t protrude from their chests like human females do. One theory is they may have evolved to sunk into their chest cavity instead as living in caves and often ride inside of golems would make protrusions of any kind a hindrance. Also, the mammary glands wouldn’t need to be anywhere near as big as a human because the Asura are so small. Plus, their culture clearly values intelligence than physical appearance. It’s possible that a bigger head is far more appealing than bigger breasts. That may be why they are also fixated on ears.

You also have to consider that technology is so ingrained in the Asura culture that it possibly has influenced their evolution. Consider the gates. Teleporting matter across any distance of space is still decades if not a full century ahead of our present level of understanding. We’ve just learned how to teleport energy a few years ago. However, it’s so common to the Asura that it has spread well beyond their political borders and is commercially available at a ridiculously low cost. (Well, low considering what the maintenance for it all must be.) If they’ve had such a complex level of tech just laying about everywhere, can you imagine how long they’ve been riding inside of golems? And that’s something we can practically do today. Their current size may even be to better facilitate being inside vehicles.

Anyway, the tl:dr version is, Asura aren’t human so you can’t assume that similarities run deeper than they appear.