Guild Wars 2

Are there any ghost that aren’t human?

Asura/Norn/Charr/Sylvari ghost?

I don’t remember ever seeing one.

If only human ghost exist… Why is that?

The only actual ghosts we see (as far as I remember) are victims of the Foefire, and that only effected humans (and simply killed Charr), and no Asura or Norn were near Ascalon City at that time and the Sylvari were not even born.

There are plenty of pirate ghosts in the game, and the ones in the Fawcett’s Bounty puzzle are human, asura, norn, and charr. There are also charr spirits in southeaster Iron Marches, though I don’t know that I’d call those ghosts. Oola’s spirit/ghost is in her lab in Metrica. There’s a norn ghost in southwest Maelstrom, and a ghostly norn crew in southeast Cursed Shore. And there are several jotun ghosts at their old kennings.

You can also encounter ghostly cows in one Charr Personal Story. Seriously. XD

There are Dolyak ghosts in Harathi Hinterlands. You escort them back to their cave or something weird like that O_o.

Lordkrall is greatly incorrect with saying there’s only Foefire ghosts; those are limited to Ascalon, but spirits (even some within Ascalon) are across the continent of Tyria – a good number are in Brisban Wildlands and Harathi Hinterlands.

The Lunatic Court is made solely of ghosts and comprises all playable races sans sylvari.

There are pirate ghosts of all playable races sans sylvari (the Harathi Hinterland jumping puzzle).

There’s Gaheron Baelfire’s ghost in CoF explorable.

There’s a behemoth/wurm ghost in Aurora’s Remains. Among many human ghosts.

There are charr “ghosts” near Necromancer Bria’s mansion in Iron Marches.

There are several animal spirits in Malchor’s Leap – such as owls, wurms, and even tengu – that have names like Spirit of Sorrow, Spirit of Honor, etc. Then there are other ghostly owls, dolyaks, cats, and cows; as well as the Spirits of the Wild which include Wurm, Minotaur, Owl (former), Bear, Wolf, Wolverine, Snow Leopard, Ox, Eagle, Gorilla, and Otter (if not more). There was also a kraken spirit in GW1 – Zhu Hanuku. In GW1, we also saw centaur and charr ghosts (well, I suppose the charr ghosts bit is debatable).

Then as Aaron said there’s Oola’s spirit, various jotun spirits, and many more.

The only major race of importance we haven’t seen spirits of in any form are sylvari. And I find this very interesting.

You heard it here first folks: Sylvari have no souls! :P

Perhaps Sylvari return to the dream and therefore can’t be wandering souls with unfinished business or whatever it is that causes people in GW to be ghosts (I seem to recall reading something that suggested it was the typical ‘unfinished business’ thing, but considering the amount of happy/content ghosts we come across I don’t think thats right)

It’s pretty much a given that sylvari don’t know what happens to their souls, which is odd in a world with a definitive afterlife IMO. But some sylvari, such as Caris, believe that their souls go into the Mists like everyone else, while others such as a generically named sylvari near the cultural armor vendors in The Grove believe they return to the Dream.

My thoughts on the matter:

If their souls returned to the Dream of Dreams, then they must be indistinguishable from either the memories or the saplings in there. In the case of the former, the memories do not interact with the sylvari still dreaming, so that’s unlikely as they’re just reliving life (and if the fate of sylvari who die is to relive their life over and over again in the Dream so that others can witness it… that’s rather sad); on the case of the latter, this means that sylvari souls would lose all their memories and possibly be reborn again later on, which would count towards the kodan religious belief – and is very much possible.

My personal view on the matter of sylvari souls is that I don’t think they have any. The pure lack of seeing sylvari ghosts/souls, the fact they don’t know what happens to them upon death other than a dead body, and the fact that their race effectively came from nothing makes me think that they are akin to sapient elementals (similar to djinn, actually, except sylvari are solely plants whereas djinn can be water, air, or fire).

I’ve always personally wondered, with the Dream’s possible connection to the Mists, if the Sylvari aren’t already a form of reincarnation. This of course is unfounded speculation, but it is an interesting concept and could explain where the first sylvari’s souls came from should they constantly reincarnate as per some people’s explanations. My personal favorite thought, though, is that Tyria’s residents finally reached a higher level of enlightenment than the Kodan so the land created the Sylvari to accommodate these souls. Boy would that just rub those Kodan wrong :P

Random thoughts….
What if the pale tree is required to be alive for the sylvari to be alive?
If the pale tree were to get destroyed/killed etc, all the sylvari born from it die as well?
When a sylvari dies, the pale tree “recycles”/reincarnates them for the next cycle.
The pale tree can only have so many sylvari alive at one time. A form of limiting the sylvari from endlessly being born and outnumbering everything else.

But I think the idea behind the Pale Tree and the Sylvari is that they are uncorrupted pure life . If you go to Killeen’s grave the ground around her is free of corruption even though it’s in the middle of the Grove. I would like to think that the Pale Tree’s purpose is to birth the Sylvari so they can spread across the earth and eventually die -Where life goes, so too should you- removing corruption from the Earth. So I don’t think there is meant to be any kind of limit on the amount of Sylvari present on Tyria if they’re Tyria fighting back (pure speculation and tinfoil hatting of course). If the Pale Tree’s death caused all Sylvari to die they wouldn’t be a very effective means of purification would they. The Dream is also suggested to be something external to the Tree herself and is part of the Mists (I think?) so she’s more of a conduit rather than a direct lifeline.

The problem with your thought on Killen is that she was buried outside of the brand. I know the game makes it look like she is within it (this is probably ArenaNet trying to squeeze it in rather than leave it out for another area), but the book Ghosts of Ascalon make it very clear that they had left the brand with her body before burying her free of incursions from branded monsters.

It’s never said the Dream is part of the Mists. I and others have speculated such due to the similarities between the two.

Narcemus.1348:

The problem with your thought on Killen is that she was buried outside of the brand. I know the game makes it look like she is within it (this is probably ArenaNet trying to squeeze it in rather than leave it out for another area), but the book Ghosts of Ascalon make it very clear that they had left the brand with her body before burying her free of incursions from branded monsters.

My impression was that the grove Killeen was buried in was just outside the Brand – there’s just a little corner of the Fields of Ruin that’s been cut off from the rest by the Brand. The overmap has purple brush strokes over it, but that’s just part of the overmap being less finely detailed than the actual world map – when you look at the Brand in the explored maps, it’s quite a bit thinner than it appears in the overmap.

What is incongruous is that according to the ingame map there’s no passable route into the Plains of Ashford without passing back through the Dragonbrand, but I think that’s where we need to accept that the impassable rectangle of mountains around each zone ingame is a mechanic to explain why you can only cross zones at transitions, not a faithful representation of what the topography is actually like.

(Ironically, actually, comparing to Ghosts of Ascalon would put Rytlock’s camp around the location of Camp Keiran.)

There is a sylvari influence in the area, though, actively fighting the Brand. At the very least we can see it manifested as those turrets at the glen’s mouth that fire on the nearby Branded humans.

I would definitely agree with you on the mountains drax. Except for very few situation where there are hidden gardens/grottos/tunnels located within the mountains I would say that the region is most likely relatively flat and it is merely a component to specify where people transition between zones. I would say it is similar to the situation of the amount of time it takes to go from Ebonhawke to Ascalon city, which is much less than the time it takes in game.

On the subject though, I would agree that what you are saying is possible, and that as the brand is attempting to grow (which some charr settlements do seem to show this as having happened) that the area has been kept clean because of her essence. I do wonder, though, why other such sites of sylvari death do not show such resilience, Riannoc’s being one such place. A conclusion one can come to, though, is that if the corruptive presence is nearby at the point of death that the sylvari’s corpse could somehow provide protection for the land around it. This could corroborate with Riannoc’s death because there wasn’t necessarily corruption within the area where he died, just minions.

my bet: sylvaris reincarnate.

they die, their “essence” or whatever you wanna call it goes to the dream, and they possibly retain part of their memory upon waking up again. meaning a sylvari might be stuck with the same wyld hunt for multiple incarnations, only he wouldn’t know that, as the most he gets to remember is the bare minimum to motivate him to follow his hunt.

i bet this theory is full of holes, but i think it would be the coolest way to describe the dream, the sylvaris, their “memories” and their hunts.