Guild Wars 2

I have looked into what I was able to find of the Sylvari biology. They are plants, golden sap in the place of blood. No pulse/blood pressure. Can still bleed. Can get tipsy, even drunk on alcohol. Yet the one thing that I questioned was illness. There are diseases that are passed from plant to plant. As there are kinds passed from humans, animals, etc.

The question being, can a Sylvari catch say, the Flu? If so, is it the same flu as the humans, or plant based? Do they have an immune system?

There was a Heart in the Bloodtide coast that had to do with some plague harming the Quaggan, it got me wondering of what kind of resistances to illness Sylvari had, as they have no white blood cells. (To my knowledge) As they have no blood, only golden sap.

Sylvari can’t catch Human diseases, just like Humans can’t catch Sylvari diseases.

Fair enough, just was something that I wondered about. Thanks.

No, a Sylvari couldn’t catch a human flu. Much of what we, as humans, find disgusting they probably wouldn’t mind, and things that we don’t mind at all they would be horrified by.

Here, some examples.

Humans find piles of sewage disgusting. Why? Because waste carries transmissible diseases, and having an instinctual avoidance reaction helps keep you alive and thus able to pass on your genes. To the Sylvari, though, it’s just a pile of nutrient-rich fertilizer. They have no reason to avoid it or seek it out, they would simply note it like we note the smell of grass.

On a similar note, humans don’t particularly mind the smell of decaying plant matter. It can range from something nasty – like rotting fruit or food – to something largely inoffensive, like a decaying log, or even pleasant, like well-decomposed compost. A Sylvari, on the other hand, might have the same reaction to it that we have to the smell of rotting meat – revulsion and nausea.

Perceptions are interesting.

Hmmmm… I think it would even be possible for Sylvari to get aphid in their headleaves as Humans coul get lice in their hair, right?

There is honestly a bit of suspension of disbelief you have to work with here for the sake of game mechanics. Sylvari can get drunk and can digest every single kind of food because… otherwise, all the nourishment and booze items in game wouldn’t work on them, and that would be sad for the player.
Sylvari can bleed (which means they must have blood pressure) because… bleed is a condition in the game. So is poison, which needs either blood circulation, or oxygen circulation to get into a body.

In pure lore, where such game mechanics don’t matter, Sylvari wouldn’t need to breathe with lungs, wouldn’t need to digest in a stomach-intestines system, wouldn’t need blood pressure, wouldn’t need a heart… if you talk to the Sylvari caretakers in the starter area and the grove, they will indeed tell you that Sylvari need special ‘Healers’ because all the animal races wouldn’t know what to do with a sick or injured Sylvari, so they’re obviously meant to have a vastly different system in lore. You can reasonably assume from that they can’t get the same diseases as humans.

humans can get crabs. sylvari can get termites. i sure as hell wouldnt want crabs or termites. just saying.

Insect pests wouldn’t last long on a Sylvari, since basic things like moving around and taking a shower, bath or whatever knocks pests off. Aphids in particular only feed on plants with fragile leaves and die just from a spray of water.

Termites are the same, too— they go after dead, rotting wood. Healthy plants rarely get much bug damage, and the problem is mostly because they can’t walk away or bathe themselves.

/gardener in rl

Plants also have immune systems though, they just work differently. They don’t have a circulating immune system, but each cell in the plant is able to respond to infections on their own instead.

It makes sense for Sylvari to eat and drink. Unlike a stationary plant who extracts its needs from the sun and the earth the Sylvari move and actively think, both things that burn energy at an alarming rate.

Thus they need a secondary energy input and food/drink comes in. Plus it helps in their mimicry of humans.

What I would like to know is to what purpose do they glow at night. Lovely as it is I would like why they do that and Wiki has no answer.

Ten.8421:

There is honestly a bit of suspension of disbelief you have to work with here for the sake of game mechanics. Sylvari can get drunk and can digest every single kind of food because… otherwise, all the nourishment and booze items in game wouldn’t work on them, and that would be sad for the player.
Sylvari can bleed (which means they must have blood pressure) because… bleed is a condition in the game. So is poison, which needs either blood circulation, or oxygen circulation to get into a body.

In pure lore, where such game mechanics don’t matter, Sylvari wouldn’t need to breathe with lungs, wouldn’t need to digest in a stomach-intestines system, wouldn’t need blood pressure, wouldn’t need a heart… if you talk to the Sylvari caretakers in the starter area and the grove, they will indeed tell you that Sylvari need special ‘Healers’ because all the animal races wouldn’t know what to do with a sick or injured Sylvari, so they’re obviously meant to have a vastly different system in lore. You can reasonably assume from that they can’t get the same diseases as humans.

being susceptible to the bleed condition doesn’t suggest a circulatory system necessarily. after all aren’t earth elementals also susceptible? as you said its all down to suspension of belief, otherwise you get warforged! : P

From what I’ve seen in the books: Sylvari bleed (it oozes rather than gushes), can be poisoned, and can eat meat with no problem. Caithe even gets drunk enough to pass out in one of the books. There’s really no “pure lore” to go back on there, they pretty much suffer what they do in the game mechanics from bleeding to hunger. It’s mentioned that they can get “feverish” as well, so they can get ill.

I think they need special healers because the makeup of their bodies are so different, not really because every system they have is different, it’s just not made quite the same.

As for sharing human illnesses… likely not very common. The viruses and bacteria would probably have a problem adapting or affecting the different blood/immune system. Stuff like fungal rot seems more on the dot, it’s mentioned by a healer in the Grove.

I think Ten’s point about suspension of disbelief is a good one. I do think there’s a way, though, to get the game’s lore to square up with the game mechanics. Here are my thoughts.

I love Braghi’s take on the Sylvari on this forum:

http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/forum/m/2737230/viewthread/2329469-cant-decide-if-i-like-sylvari/page/2

Basically, his suggestion is that you can think of the Pale Tree as a giant, biological computer—apropos Avatar—that got “programmed,” first, by absorbing the worldviews of a human and a centaur and, later on, by absorbing the memories and experiences and hopes and desires of other sentient beings. The sylvari are a kind of a clone army that it created by creating organisms based on these memories and experiences. (The Nightmare Court, in turn, are Sylvari who see the original programming of the Pale Tree by Ventari as corrupting their fundamental nature—a kind of virus that infected the computer.

Anyway, I love this account of the Sylvari, and it leads me to think of them as a life form that’s been created precisely to emulate humanity, and, consequently, the Pale Tree created them such that they’re biological processes mimic those of human beings. The reason why they bleed, eat, have sex, etc., is because they’ve been programmed to emulate humanity.

I think there’s some justification for this approach to Sylvari biology in the game’s lore. I read an interview with one of the game’s designers where she said that the Sylvari grow clothes to hide their nakedness so that they don’t offend other races. This makes it sound as though there physiology is sort of volitional—i.e., they don’t need to grow big leaves over their crotches, there’s no biological explanation for it, they just do it so they don’t freak out other races. Similarly, I think of their bleeding sap and eating food and getting drunk on of alcohol less as biological needs and more as ways in which they’ve programmed to emulate other lifeforms.

As far as bleeding, plants on earth can “bleed” sap. Essentially, look up xylem and turgor pressure. The size and capabilities of the sylvari mean they probably have some sort of pump based circulatory system otherwise sylvari would have mobility issues (thus they can “bleed”). But hey, plants don’t have nervous systems either so magic. As far as poison, well I guess people must be using super broad spectrum poisons since they can effect pretty much every race in the game (and since humans are aliens that is even more impressive).

In Ghosts of Ascalon, Killeen “oozes” green sap, turn pale/ yellowish when she is hurt or poisoned, and start withering drying out when they are dead.

Questions: Do sylvari grow leaves and shed them, the way animals shed their coat in spring?
Is their body fleshy or is it a network of tendrils and leaves growing around a wooden frame?
In the latter case can they interpenetrate in the way some plants do, growing tendrils against a twig? And in this case does this amount to sexual intercourse?

1) They can and do.

2) I think it’s more something like leaves/tissue wrapped around their wooden ‘bones’.

3) I haven’t the foggiest idea.

This led me to a thought.

People can’t survive long falls because bones are inherently brittle. Apply enough force and they snap and break. To tie into that, our organs are very fleshy/liquidy and just kind of… go splat under duress.

Plants don’t have either of those problems.

So would a fall from up high really do any damage to a Sylvari?

Basically since tissue is wrapped around the wooden frame, a significant fall will see the “flesh” torn from the “bones”, with concussion damage for the ’landing" limbs (absorbing the impact). Internal organs (lung/like sack and digestive tube) may be sensitive to rupture as well. Overall I would consider the Sylvari to be somehow more resistant than human, withing a certain limited, though.

Well, yeah. You’ll see torn/compressed flesh and most likely internal damage, but given what we know about plants in our world, it just seems like a fall from some height wouldn’t be as fatal/dangerous for a Sylvari as it would one of us.

So…….

do Slyvari poop?

Probably. Depends on what they have for waste disposal and processing.

My idea on why Sylvari grow at night is that, while they collect the energy of the sun during the day, they off put it at night. As they eat and drink, which sustains them, the sun is just bonus energy.

Perhaps, if the Sylvari were away from the sun too long, they would stop glowing entirely.

I wonder if sylvari breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen?

gamerRazmus.3862:

I wonder if sylvari breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen?

Afaik yes.

“do Slyvari poop?”

Since their gi tract was described as a pitcher plant pouch (and working similarly), probably not. They’d use whatever they’re eating more efficiently.

Re: oxygen: all plants ‘breathe’ like we do, it’s just that during certain photosynthesis phases, they create more of one or the other whilst converting food into energy. So we say that they ‘breathe’ carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, that’s not actually true— they’re just excreting more oxygen as a byproduct of digesting their foods.