Guild Wars 2

There was an excellent debate going on in a locked thread, but I agree that it did derail a bit from GW2. ( Still, I wish Moderaters wouldn’t automatically lock interesting threads rather than politely encourage people to get back on topic. )

So I’ll continue the question here: Is there any evidence in GW2 lore that explain the appearance of Dark-skinned Norn? Perhaps interracial relations with Elonian humans?

…Or was it simply political pressure to include dark skin in the color-slider? =/ If so.. that’s rather lame. As an African American myself I’d rather not be told: “Hey, there aren’t really such things as dark-skinned Norn in any GW2 lore or stories. But atleast now you can pretend there are!”

(That.. and somehow my sylvari looks more like me than my human does. x_x)

Lore-wise that is explained by the Norns going in places outside the Far Shiverpeaks after the awakening of Jormag.
In the book Ghosts of Ascalon a tanned Norn is mentioned since he spend a good time sailing, I’m sure there are Norns that traveled farther and for more time to the point that darker skin is plausible.

Norns aren’t human or real and thus real-world evolutionary parallels don’t necessarily apply. Maybe they just have a range or skin tones the way sylvari have a crazy range of colors. Perhaps different lineages that worship different animals are close to that animal’s appearance (coloration).

It definitely wasn’t relations with humans. A-net said half breeds aren’t possible. I’d chalk it up to any new cosmetic character trait they add. “It was always there, it just wasn’t represented.”

The way it’s presented in game is that Norn develop darker skin tones when they leave the Shiverpeaks (and possibly just some of them). So I’d guess that their skin just darkens very easily in the sun.

Another possibility: Animals often change their coats during different seasons to cope better with the weather. It’s possible that a Norn spending a lot of time in a hot climate will notice their skin darkening in order to cope better with the sun and offer better UVA/UVB/burnt skin protection. – Personally I like this explanation because it’s at least partially scientific and given the Norn’s close relationship to animals I like the idea that they would have evolved with those kinds of adaptive capabilities.

You can see it as getting tanned while travelling – certainly a factor with my own Norn – but even among humans, being tanned/darker skin hue and living in an arctic climate is not unusual, depending on factors such as feeding habits.

However, I really don’t think Norn are human at all. They don’t need to wear clothes even in what we would consider cold climate, they wear them for style, practicality or to revere spirits. You actually see quite a few Norn, particularly shaman I’ve noticed, with darker complexions. Most of my norn are dark because it feels natural to me, being wanderers and out under the sky a lot, especially now that they visit other lands than the shiverpeaks.

Going by FlamingFoxx’ entry, I think that theory is possible as well, particularly if there is any truth to the Norn descending from the Kodan. I don’t know how much that has been refuted.

The thing about being tanned requiring they leave the shiverpeaks doesn’t really fit. If people were really able to run around without clothes in a snowy environment without freezing to death like the norn do, they would be pretty kitten ed tanned because of the crazy amout of UV you’d get off of the snow. Anyone who’s gone skiing for a couple of hours and wound up with a worse sunburn on their face than a day at the beach can attest to this.

Actually, if we’re going to try and be scientific to a pedantic degree, norn should all be pretty tanned if they’re skin works like humans and they run around naked in the snow all the time.

While appearance might be a way to tell humans apart, the same isn’t true of the norn. They’re all just norn.

Norn have light and dark skin for the same reasons they have light and dark hair. First, they’re not human. And second, just because.

Trying to find another reason is a waste of time! This is a fantasy world and anything goes. Like, how will this chainmail bikini actually protect me from a rampaging dragon?!

Just accept it and enjoy the game

It is 250 years after GW1. After they were pushed South, in that short span of time, they developed dark skin, which helped their survivability in the heat. Note that they generate a lot of heat when they move such that their bodies are well adapted to the cold (which includes pale skin to help them get nutrients they wouldn’t otherwise obtain with little sun) – dark skin would certainly help in the heat (to prevent dangerous burning of their fragile skin in the sun). Of course, 250 years is extraordinarily rapid in terms of Earthly evolution (when humans went North, they went lighter-skinned as it was advantageous), but this IS Tyria and a fantasy game after all….

Dark hair, also, is not abnormal for pale-skinned people.

Back in GW1, when we were led to believe that humans and Norn could interbreed, I actually always thought that Turai Ossa was actually a Norn or of Norn descent, given his immense stature compared to his human troops. As a dark-skinned character himself, it would have lent weight to the theory that dark-skinned Norn had a human ancestor in their bloodline at some point. (The original human settlers in Kryta came from Elona, so if they had spread up north into the Shiverpeaks and met the Norn, any descendents of that union would have introduced dark skin to the Norn.)

That implication of human/norn interbreeding from GW1 has been confirmed wrong. A-net specifically said that half breeds are not possible.

edit: The link is down from “Pax day 2 from a role players eyes” that confirmed it but here is a forum that are discussing that interview. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/18441-interview-pax-experiences-ashenfold-cartel-blog/

“Note it deals with the great human / norn debate.”

“Oh thank God…”

“I cannot stand people who play half-breeds.”

“I’m kind of glad it’s not possible.”

“Thanks for getting that half-norn thing settled!”

Yeah, I’m well aware that the idea of cross-breeding between Norn and humans has long been retconned. I was just saying that it would have made a lot of sense and provided an explanation of why there are dark-skinned Norn if their race was traditionally “white”.

Well, Who is to say that there are no Norn settlements in the far South? Just because you haven’t seen or heard from them, doesn’t mean they do not exist.
As a species, modern humans started with dark skin, and as they migrated north, became lighter skinned.
There is nothing to suggest that this did not happen in revers for some of the Norns.
Lore wise it is plausible as far as I am aware.

Or it could simply be how their skin varies. I’d wonder if there could be any piebald Norns …

I have 3 cats right now, and have had other cats in my life. The color of their paw pads seems entirely unrelated to anything else, be it fur or eyes. It can be pink, black, or a mix. They’ve all been shorthairs, so it’s not related to being of breeds suited to specific climates.

I like the idea that Norns have enough connection to animals to share some characteristics such as variable skin tone. Plus darker skin is just so much more awesome to me … I’m RL pasty fish white, but have black siblings, and believe me they are far better looking nor me I like being able to make truly good looking characters! And I’ll take any lore explanation I can to make it make sense.

I believe that a majority of the Norn in Hoelbrak are pale due to the regions surrounding mountainous terrain, the fog that blankets the western Wayfarer Foothills, and the never clearing clouded sky that sprinkles a never ending snow fall on the rest of the Shiverpeaks. That being said, personally I think that the Norn would like other species be acceptable to evolve genetically so that to adapt and survive in their environment. There is no evidence disproving the possibility of dark skinned settlements of Norn in farther Southern regions that I know of.

I do resist the idea that they’ve “evolved” during the past centuries. Evolution takes a heck of a lot longer than that. So I’d rather there was something more intrinsic than environmental factors allowing the wider skin tone variety.

Especially since even the dark skinned ones clearly are cold-resistant, so they didn’t come out of hot places.

Dark skin doesn’t necessarily mean an affinity for hot climates. For example, did you know that polar bears actually have black skin? Their FUR is white, to better help camouflage them against the snow from their prey, but their skin underneath is black.

I don’t have any issue with Norns having dark skin; I just thought the sudden appearance of dark-skinned Norns was odd given that every single Norn we saw in GW1 is white. But I just shrugged and chalked it up to “development time constraints”, same way we never saw any female Charr in GW1.

What I thought I had implied was that it’s possible that a subspecies of the Norn migrated someplace warm and evolved with each passing generation, it is also possible that the subspecies of Norn lived someplace hot and migrated someplace cold. Also I read in another discussion that a Norns climate-resistance changes from one environment to the next, so who’s to say that they don’t become warm resistant in extremely hot climates. I believe there could be other ethnicity and skin colours of the norn race for the same reason there are other ethnicity and skin colours of the human race.

Evolution of Skin Colours: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1132/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations

I think you can make up your own story. But now that you mention it I haven’t seen a dark skinned npc so far.

There are some dark skinned Norn NPCs – Moda the Quick (Speaker of Raven), Vheratha (has a tavern in Hoelbrak), Havroun Svena (Havroun of Snow Leopard, you meet her if you pick Protect the Spirits in your bio), Scholar Prott (Priory representative in Norn personal story)…just to name a few off the top of my head. But there weren’t any in the original game, which is unfortunate.

Even my norns are dark skinned (copies of eachother, just changed last name). Because they lived for generations on the south.

Inuits are fairly dark skinned. Its vary possible dark skinned Norns are actually from even further north and a re simuler to Inuits. Also it could be linked to polar ears who I’m fairly certain black skinned under all that white fur.

All very possible. We don’t know how many Norn cultures there are either. There may be Norn in other parts of Tyria, or even beyond.

There could be a myriad of RP reasons for even “black” Norn. It doesn’t have to be farfetched, lorewise, either. Much like I don’t try to reason why the Vigil Norn mentor has purple eyes, and Wynett Fairhaired has also light purple hair. It’s a game, and with a non-human race there’s even more reasonable explanations why things are different than what we expect as human beings (Norn are not human, and thus are not beholden to our “rules”, be it evolutionary or otherwise-for that matter, not even Tyria’s humans should be strictly clones of real world humans, IMO.)

I think that the similarity between specific real-life human ethnicities and the Norn are given too much importance if you deny them the possibility of being dark skinned. Glad ANet put many dark skinned Norn NPCs in the game to prove such expectations wrong.

I once felt rather insulted when a friend told me my black character was inplausible and “ridiculous”, which I called him out for. Please do not do the same to any players. Your convictions of how certain races are supposed to look like must not be someone else’s (said black character was deleted over time, but I made a new black Norn Necromancer with a particular, “strange” look for my own RPing reasons, less than a day ago.)

I have more of an issue with silly names, and even then I NEVER complain about those because it’s their character and playing experience, not my own. What I consider RP inappropriate has no bearing on how someone else has chosen to enjoy the game.

We only saw -some- of the Norn in Guildwars 1. Jormag came and drove -all- of the Norn from the Northern Shiverpeaks, they could also have been living elsewhere. Given their nature I would be surprised if they only lived in one part of Tyria, if and when we get to leave the continent, I would not be surprised to find Norn living in other parts of the world. Also I’ve learned that real-world logic does not always apply to Tyria, so beware.

Goren and Jora help establish the dark skin Norns… Although they were’nt considered intellectuals they both endured similar hardships and each had the flame of pride and loyalty burning within them. It’s was just natural for them to come together. Just as some of the Neanterthals and Homosapiens did.

panzer.6034:

Norns aren’t human or real and thus real-world evolutionary parallels don’t necessarily apply. Maybe they just have a range or skin tones the way sylvari have a crazy range of colors. Perhaps different lineages that worship different animals are close to that animal’s appearance (coloration).

Even though we know they’re as different a species as Asura are to Charr, the type of people that would call Anet racist are not the people who would play the game or even have an inkling of what it’s about or that Norn are a completely different species.
They resemble humans and by media standards, must obey human standards and constrictions.

My Norn is a big black woman, I just pretend it’s a genetic mutation, like Albinism.

Raesin.2908:

They resemble humans and by media standards, must obey human standards and constrictions.

???
Because of the rating board (similar to the asura being considered as children, or Taimi being assimilated to an irl human child) ? Or because this MMORPG isn’t designed for RPGamers?

To say it short, I’d rather have had the female norns as non-human as the male norns look like. Things would have been more clear in my mind. But no, they are more like teenager walking dreams. Even if the are “sistas” as well.

Back to the topic, I’d have an imaginative explanation based on the Nature Spirits (as suggested above), rather than a hyper-sensitivity to sunlight or hot weather (by human standard).

Indeed, the current design, using a quasi-human tint scale (except blueish white skin), without any “animal/totemic” trait (except tattoos) nor any link to norn transforms (why don’t the transforms have the same general hue as the bare skin?), makes it quite cheap in my opinion (in the sens that they look much like a copy of the humans).

bullyrook.2165:

All very possible. We don’t know how many Norn cultures there are either. There may be Norn in other parts of Tyria, or even beyond.

It was said in the beginnings that Norns were called ‘Norngolians’ at one point in time. My elementalist is in fact a Dark-skinned (more swarthy than dark) that seems to look slightly asian/altaic look to him.

I both enjoy and believe the idea that they darken very easily. Since they are highly resistant to cold weather and wear little to no clothing even in below freezing temperatures, I imagine anything even remotely warm would be difficult for them to withstand. Which would probably then lead to a greater likely-hood in them developing darker skin in a more average climate.

Braham is a black norn?

He’s mixed race. His father was a “black” Norn, and his mother is Eir, obviously.