Guild Wars 2

Then WHY do you think they are part of that set?

Because you fight one in the beginning. Wurm is a Spirit of the Wild, yes; he’s the Spirit of wurms. Those things you fight almost literally everywhere. You see hatchling wurms, grown wurms, oversized champion wurms; that’s a wurm. That’s all a wurm will ever be. They don’t gain experience points and evolve into dragons at lvl 81.

Elder Dragons seem like they are very much apart from nature, not a part of nature. They disrupt the natural balance everywhere they go, just by existing.

Wurms can be annoying, big or small, but at least they fit into an ecological niche (somewhat…maybe they act like larger counterparts of real-life worms, tunneling through soil and making it more fertile).

Oglaf.1074:

I guess it all narrows down to your interpretation of resisted.

In order to resist, one must be proactive. Otherwise it’s just resilience, immunity, etc.

Nike.2631:

There is a very strong indicator in-game that Jormag has to be viewed as at least semi-valid as a sprit: Norn Racial skills.

One for Snow Lepard,
One for Wolf,
One for Bear,
On for Raven,
One for Owl,
And… a Worm. An Ice Worm – for Dragon.

Uh…. Now come on, I know he’s not all that popular, but give Wurm some credit will you?

It’s like if there was an eagle-related skill and you go relating it to Owl or Raven, rather than Eagle. There’s a lot of Spirits of the Wild, not just the nine focused on in GW2 (those nine being the four big ones, Owl, Wolverine, Ox (aka Dolyak), and Minotaur – there’s also Eagle, Hare, and Wurm, of those known)

Nike.2631:

The whole family of wyrms/wurms/worms words are related to dragons, and that thing, the enormous, godawful THING I killed to start my legend? Yeah. One of those.

If you think 5 out of six things in a set created by Devs are related to an obvious theme, and one isn’t…
Well, we have very different means of speculating .

Wyrms are not the same as Wurms. Wurm is Germanic for worm. Wyrm is a type of draconic creature (typically a fire drake).

In Guild Wars, Wurms are basically just very very big worms.

And Summon Wurm is pretty kitten obvious itself. Especially if you know your norn lore, go to the GW2W or GWW’s article on Spirits of the Wild, or been following interviews on GW2 long before release (there was a few where when discussing racial skills, they said you can call upon the Wurm Spirit to summon one of its children).

Edit: okay, apparently GW2W’s article doesn’t list Wurm for some reason, and because that nav bar removed all the minor Spirits of the Wild there’s no easy way to know of the Wurm Spirit…

Edit2: Fixed! GW2W’s article now lists all Spirits of the Wild, as does that nav. So now the two least mentioned in-game should be more known about. >.>

Wow, that’s the first time I’ve watched some go and write a wiki article to back their argument in real time.

Have any in-game references? charater dialogue? Interactive objects?

Nike.2631:

Wow, that’s the first time I’ve watched some go and write a wiki article to back their argument in real time.

Have any in-game references? charater dialogue? Interactive objects?

Have you? And by the way, the Wurm could be a totem spirit, in which case a Norn follower of Wurm could shapeshift into something truly ugly. Not call a wurm to battle just like they can’t call wild bears to just drop on someone’s head. Norn can also call an owl to attack, and Owl is dead. It is just a Norn thing. It doesn’t have a special significance.

At the risk of derailing this thread, I wonder if there’s some kind of pre-requisite needed for a race to have its own Spirit. We never see Spirits of humans, norn, asura, skritt etc. so it seems likely that if a race is sapient, they do not have a Spirit. Perhaps a Spirit embodies the “sapient awareness” of a race concentrated in a single being, as opposed to spread out among all members of the race like humans?

If that is the criteria, then wouldn’t that mean that just about any non-sapient creature you meet in the wild has a Spirit? Drake Spirit, Skelk Spirit, Moa Spirit, Griffon Spirit, Spider Spirit (you think Gargantula was bad??) etc.

They are called Spirits of the Wild – pretty much any animal can and does have its own spirit, although some Spirits are more powerful and more revered in Norn society than others.
In addition to that, Norn recognize certain aspects of the natural world as Spirits, such as Mountain, Darkness etc. but do not ascribe them the same sentient attributes as they do to the totem spirits.

As for sentient races, no, there are no Spirits of Human, Asura, Charr, Jotun and so on. Closest you could get are the human Gods, who are just Spirits to Norn.

Basically think of the Spirits as personifications of certain attributes of animals and the natural world. Sentient races are far too diverse to be so easily characterized as to have a totem spirit of their own.

Nike.2631:

Wow, that’s the first time I’ve watched some go and write a wiki article to back their argument in real time.

Have any in-game references? charater dialogue? Interactive objects?

If you ake note, I didn’t make any articles (relevant to this discussion). I just edit them to be more complete.

Wurm was first mentioned in GW1: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Egil_Fireteller

And second mentioned in an interview, which I won’t bother digging through hundreds of interviews just to find the one which mentions that a norn racial skill calls upon the Wurm Spirit to summon a wurm to fight with you.

Zaxares.5419:

At the risk of derailing this thread, I wonder if there’s some kind of pre-requisite needed for a race to have its own Spirit. We never see Spirits of humans, norn, asura, skritt etc. so it seems likely that if a race is sapient, they do not have a Spirit. Perhaps a Spirit embodies the “sapient awareness” of a race concentrated in a single being, as opposed to spread out among all members of the race like humans?

If that is the criteria, then wouldn’t that mean that just about any non-sapient creature you meet in the wild has a Spirit? Drake Spirit, Skelk Spirit, Moa Spirit, Griffon Spirit, Spider Spirit (you think Gargantula was bad??) etc.

Eir explains what the Spirits of the Wild are, something about wildife, so I don’t think there’s any race which isn’t considered “wildlife” to have a spirit.

Though in Orr there are “Spirit of Valor” (iirc) which are tengu (mostly near the Cathedral of Tempests).

And I think Garm would be insulted if you said he wasn’t sapient! Just because they don’t talk doesn’t mean they’re not sapient.

Gaudrath.6725:

As for sentient races, no, there are no Spirits of Human, Asura, Charr, Jotun and so on.

Mighty big assumption there. Though nothing hints to it, if there are spirits of humans, asura, charr, etc. Well, who’s to say Spirits of the Wild aren’t simply a powerful Minotaur and so forth’s soul?

Not like Owl’s death caused harm to the owl race.

If only I can remember what Eir says about the Spirits of the Wild (I have it screenshotted – she mentions it during the Protect the Spirits storyline – it’s just on my other computer).

Konig Des Todes.2086

Not like Owl’s death caused harm to the owl race.

If only I can remember what Eir says about the Spirits of the Wild (I have it screenshotted – she mentions it during the Protect the Spirits storyline – it’s just on my other computer).

True. That’s probably the biggest factor against my theory that the Spirits represent the collective sapient awareness of a species concentrated in a single being, the fact that Owl’s death appears to cause no lasting harm to the owls across the world.

I don’t remember what Eir says about the Spirits of the Wild too, but I do remember that she was actually initially skeptical about the existence of a Minotaur spirit too, meaning there actually could be many more Spirits out there that simply haven’t been seen/discovered yet. Perhaps they dwell in different parts of the world (if Wallows had their own spirit, and they only live in Cantha, it would make sense that the Wallow Spirit would be located there), or maybe they’re just so shy and reclusive that they prefer not to be seen (like Hare).

actually, i think Eir was skeptical about the minotaur spirit being behind the attacks, not the existence of the minotaur spirit itself

I could be misremembering, but I’m pretty certain she says something like, “A Minotaur Spirit has never been seen.” Crucially, she doesn’t say “Minotaur hasn’t been seen in a long time.”

For Eir’s skepticalness, it’s a mixture of both. She doubts it exists, and says that if it does it hasn’t been seen in a long time:

If such a spirit exists, it hasn’t been seen in generations. Why would it show up now?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wild_Spirits#Dialogues

Anyways, being back at my desktop rather than laptop, I found the screenshot. Sadly, it wasn’t what I remembered – the screenshot I took is just Eir saying “Destroying a Spirit harms the very soul of the wilderness.” And that’s up to big interpretation.

We do know from Protecting the Spirits storyline that the Spirits of the Wild knows the wellbeing of their species, but beyond that we don’t know much of what they are. Though Ferfhen calls Minotaur the “guardian spirit” of the minotaurs. So that’s likely what they are, more than anything – protectors of a specific race.

Eh, if you look at each totem spirit, they could be called an “essence” of that animal or natural phenomenon. That is because all animals of the same species behave in the same way. So it is easy to distill those virtues into a totem spirit.

Not so with sentient races. So far nobody has really managed to come up with a true definition of a human being (NOT human as in biological species!), even though there have been many attempts. When you come down to it, humans as entities are too diverse and varied to be encompassed by a simple set of virtues which could be distilled in a Spirit of Humans.
Same for other sentient species, storytelling cliches aside. You see one bear, you have pretty much seen them all. See one human, or one Asura, and you definitely still have no idea about what humans or Asura are like.

Closest you could get to definitions of human aspects are their Gods. Which Norn already recognize as Spirits.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Sadly, it wasn’t what I remembered – the screenshot I took is just Eir saying “Destroying a Spirit harms the very soul of the wilderness.” And that’s up to big interpretation.

Kind of ominous, though, with Owl dead. There doesn’t seem to have been any impact on the wild owl population that I’ve seen, but the effects might be more subtle. Or it could be cumulative, something we wouldn’t see unless more Spirits had been killed.

Though I’ll admit, it seems strange to me that a new Owl Spirit wouldn’t be born or some such. But Owl might be the first Spirit to have ever died, so who knows what the ultimate outcome will be. Maybe we’ll find out more when we kill Jormag – Dolyak, Eagle, and Wolverine might be trapped within him, and we might free Owl’s energy to eventually be reborn as a new Spirit.

I wonder if Owl truly is dead. I mean, Jormag assaults minds right? And though Owl pretty much went kamakazi by dizing into Jormag’s mouth to claw at him from inside to distract him from norn underneath their aerial battle, who’s to say that he didn’t just imprison Owl and corrupted her?

True, her havroun confirmed her death, but I wouldn’t put it past someone to hide a truth of “a Spirit of the Wild has become corrupted and is now our enemy” – or for that his havroun simply misunderstood.

A possible interesting concept, fighting Owl as a champion of Jormag.

Owl is a hope diety.

I’d say its almost a given that the storyline against Jormag will feature finding and either freeing (imprisoned) or redeeming (Jormag’s Champion) Owl.

That’s just how hope dieties work.

:)

Actually, I think it’s Hare which would represent hope more (iirc, a little norn girl she saved from a blizzard mentions some such). Owl is just family and hearth. :P

Mm, the Lost Spirit’s Shrine has impressions of connecting to three of the four lost Spirits – Owl, Wolverine, and Dolyak. It’s missing Eagle, for some reason, but from Owl’s, you get this:

“What comes next is an assault on the senses. A flurry of feathers, a scream into the maw of oblivion, a creeping coldness. But one sensation towers over them all—hope.”

That may be what the havroun felt. So it’s possible that Jormag just swallowed her and she can’t reach out to her followers anymore. The ‘sensation of hope’ certainly suggests she might either still be alive or may come back in some form.

Wolverine and Dolyak are also pretty ominous, though:

“The trumping sound of a heavy animal running can be heard, but it swiftly disappears beyond the reach of any senses.” -Dolyak

“There is a vague emptiness, of something lost and perhaps unable to ever be found again. " -Wolverine

You know, I never considered that being what the Owl Havroun felt – I never really got a thought to what it may be. But if so, I’d say that sensation of hope being Owl’s hope that the norn got away as that creeping coldness engulfs her as she’s swallowed by Jormag (the “maw of oblivion”).

With such a concept in mind, the other two may be what the last known Ox and Wolverine Havrouns felt – Ox’s would signify to me perhaps fleeing into the Mists with its job done (or just out of fear of being devoured too), and Wolverine’s… perhaps also means that Spirit’s dead (that was always my thought in the matter at least), or Wolverine’s feeling over Owl’s death – both plausible under such a concept.