Guild Wars 2

if you’re not a hardcore fantasy/mythology buff you might want to skip this post.

like any good Asura, curiosity guides me. so here we go..
Sylvari, despite popular conception, are not elves. look closely. they’re Dryads.
my own beloved species are neither gnomes nor goblins. Asura are Gremlins.
Norn? they’re not the Nords that we love out of The Elder Scrolls. they’re Giants out of Nordic lore (or the closest that ANet could make to them).
so my question.
i’m pretty deep on this knowledge but come up short here. i can trace everyone else except Charr. what have i missed? what are Charr based off of in mythology/fairy tales/whatever? or are they a wholely ANet creation?

The closest Charr would be to other stories would probably be Orcs from Lord of the Rings. And that is quite far as well.
The charr are quite unique.

I believe the jotun are probably closer to being the jotun than the norn are.

Charr are beasts like beauty and the beast.

In Nordic lore the giants and ogres (and trolls?) were all lumped together against the gods. So the Norn and Jotun may both fullfill that role. Even the jotun in the Norn city refers to the time of the giants when both the Norn and the Jotun ruled unopposed.

There are actually several types of mythological cat creatures that came up in my google search. Might wanna start there.

Also, great call on the gremlins. i kept thinking a cross between gnomes and goblins but that’s exactly what a gremlin is.

tuatha de danann from Ireland. Many different myths about them, but Cryptic’s game City of Heroes protrayed them best. I felt the Charr were very much influenced by them. Even their ingame story is similiar. With their never-ending war against the Fir Bolg.

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Tuatha_de_Dannan

I’m not sure about mythology, but perhaps they are based off of the Kzin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kzin

They were designed as a replacement for standard orc monsters. In retrospect they do look like they were inspired by Beauty and the Beast, and at least one of the artists is a Disney fan, but the original concepts would indicate they evolved into something like that rather than being inspired by it.

http://tangrala.blogspot.com/2009/03/old-skool-charr.html

Oh, i didn’t maen that they were specifically designed from the movie. I just meant "beast’ in the general sense. I read in another post that someone described them as a chimera (Not THE chimera)like the jersey devil. An amalgomation of diffrent animals. i just came across a new term for me. Liminal being. A creature that has no clear boundaries or set catagory.

If you had never seen a Charr but was trying to get a description you might hear something like “A beast that walks upright but runs on all fours. has fangs and claws like a lion but antlers like a goat/ram/elk. It had sharp retractable claws on it’s forpaws but could manipulate weopons and tools like a man.” or, something to that effect.

I am with Eagleowl – they are like Kzin- or the Kilrathi from Wing commander games (who were also based on the Kzin

We’re lions rowr =3

OK this might be a little out but i am say Charr is base on Kilrathi… from Wing Commander..

http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Kilrathi

Here is a good article to read…
http://www.arena.net/blog/the-artistic-origin-of-the-charr

Also to quote the wiki
“The charr have many similarities with three time periods and groups:
The Mongols – they were once just clans fighting amongst each other, and were united under a Khan. They also broke through an enormous wall of a southern kingdom, China in the case of the Mongols, Ascalon in that of the charr.
The Roman Empire – many titles, words, and their modern military appears greatly inspired by Rome.
The Industrial Age – they’re the most technologically advanced race which appears to be in a parallel stage of development.”

My three year old daughter pointed out that charr look like beast from disney’s beauty and the beast. If you make a male charr with the forward/upward pointing horns and give him the correct fur color, you can basically make them identical to the beast.

I strongly agree with “Wing Commander” idea since the game devs using strong old game references and one of them is absulutly “Wing Commander” and Kilrathi.

Same face and body type etc both big cats after all…

Ahh I miss the old-school games…

Charr are Beast from Beauty and the Beast.

The hunchback, the horns, the fur, even his face is reminiscent of one of the Male charr faces.

Raughten.2513:

tuatha de danann from Ireland. Many different myths about them, but Cryptic’s game City of Heroes protrayed them best. I felt the Charr were very much influenced by them. Even their ingame story is similiar. With their never-ending war against the Fir Bolg.

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Tuatha_de_Dannan

I think this is a really good answer, minus the game. Look up Fir Bolg mythology.