Time is all relative. -Speccio, Asura Chronomancer
Sylvari & The Soul [HoT Spoilers]
Theory 2 doesn’t work, as there are heavy magical effects in the surrounding area where the Bloodstones are – and none were seen in either GW1 or GW2. Furthermore, that wouldn’t explain why we don’t see ghosts of sylvari killed in far away places. And as an aside, it isn’t so much the act of killing on a Bloodstone as it appears to be the inscriptions placed on two specific bloodstones. It would also be extremely weird for a village to be built upon a Bloodstone – as it is where the village was that the Pale Tree was planted atop of.
Theory 3 is most likely, given their origins (seeing how you never bring it up, I’m guessing you’ve not gone through Season 2 or Heart of Thorns yet so I won’t spoil).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Theory 2 was a bit unclear. I meant to say that they were sacrificed elsewhere.
Thank you for the feedback. Also have been through season 2 and HoT
Time is all relative. -Speccio, Asura Chronomancer
I just kinda though they havent been on tyria long enuff for us to run into any sylvari spirits
(like 25+ years max)
(edited by Deleena.3406)
I just kinda though they havent been on tyria long enuff for us to run into any sylvari spirits
(like 25+ years max)
While it would make a kind of sense for sylvari to be soulless, I lean towards that explanation, myself. Consider how few charr, or asura, or even norn ghosts we see. There’s just been too little time, and too few sylvari deaths, to say that the fact they haven’t haunted means they can’t haunt.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
This is only mentioned in one story arc, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Loved_and_Lost, but it’s very abstract, and almost just symbolic.
The only thing I see mentionned here is that his memories in the Dream will inspire newborns to be good. It is nothing new and nothing like hunting or ghosts.
I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)
In regards to the Sylvari having souls, after reading this thread I happened to be leveling an alt and while doing so, I replayed the Secrets in the Earth personal story mission. A bit of dialog from Iowerth is “…. The swamp may have swallowed Riannoc’s body, but it cannot keep us from contacting his soul.” At the very least, it would appear that the Priory believes that Sylvari possess souls.
That seems more metaphorical though, given how Iowerth describes the ritual moments before that line:
Iowerth: The ritual allows one to step through time and experience the last moments of a subject’s life. You will actually tangibly be there!
<Character name>: Could I change anything? Save his life?
Iowerth: Sadly, no. Events which have already happened are fixed in time. However, this is one caveat…
Iowerth: Although Riannoc’s death is predetermined, your death is still mutable. The dangers will be quite real – and potentially lethal. You could die as well.
Of course, this ritual is something that has bugged me since ever (that whole ‘you can’t change anything but you can be killed’ is beyond contradicting), and even more so when they wrote in the ‘memory seeds’ (if the Pale Tree had such items, why not give us one to witness Riannoc’s death?).
There is one other line about sylvari souls, in Mount Maelstrom:
Destroyer-Essence Golem: “No! Now my plans for sylvari-soul generators… will never…”
Said golem is piloted by an Inquest krewe leader, but she never actually has any action beyond terrorizing camps, and seems to be more geared towards believing they have souls rather than absolute knowledge they do given lines not present on the wiki (iirc).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
I just kinda though they havent been on tyria long enuff for us to run into any sylvari spirits
(like 25+ years max)
The sylvari first appeared in 1302 per the wiki timeline, original launch was set in 1325. Since ANet synced the Tyrian calendar to a major Terran one, it is now 1329. So 27 years at this point.
Some sylvari have died in lore, all violently, at least two of them Soundless. One would think they’d be prime candidates to form ghosts or spirits, at least the Soundless. Or come to think of it, the Pact sylvari that got turned by Mordremoth and then died in the flaming wrecks.
So maybe the parent tree can grab the “souls” of any sylvari that die, even if while alive they meditated to cut themselves off from the connection. Heck, maybe the Pale Tree can nab dead mordrem guard even as Mordremoth can (could? if he’s really dead, I suppose that’s past tense) nab Grovians. The Shadow of the Dragon’s strike could have been meant to weaken Her to limit Her ability to steal away his army fodder.
for a world like tyria 27 years is still a tiny amount of time. be kinda odd if they had ghost hunting like they been on tyria for 100s of years IMO (now that i think about it most spirits that linger seems to be human.)
You only need one death for a single haunting soul to be around in Tyria.
It’s odd that we find none, despite how quickly sylvari spread/produced – and died.
Most spirits that linger are humans, yes, but this is because the territories we’ve been exploring were almost all once ruled/inhabited by humans. But we’ve still seen our fair share of asura, norn, charr, jotun, quaggan, and so forth souls.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
You only need one death for a single haunting soul to be around in Tyria.
In theory, yes, but in practice it seems very, very rare for a spirit to linger. Ruling out whatever outlier calamities end up trapping whole crews of pirates at a time, and Bria’s shenanigans that cause souls to be removed from living bodies, I can only think of a handful of human ghosts, and no asura, charr, or norn ones, who possibly died within current living memory- a period of time more than twice as long as sylvari have existed.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Even excluding Romke’s Crew, Bria’s victims, AND the asura, norn, and charr that appear during Halloween as part of the Lunatic Court (of which there are at least 2-3 named spirits of each player race sans sylvari) AND GW1 npcs (not sure if there were asura or norn ghosts in GW1, but I know there were charr ghosts) AND ignoring non-player races, (let’s face it, at this point we’re skipping out on a lot!) there are:
- Oola
- Armund the White
- Gaheron Baelfire
And while only Gaheron is recent, I do want to say there’s another case of both asura and norn that I can’t think of atm… It’s also possible that the pirate ghosts we see in Gendarran Fields and Sparkfly Fen include norn/asura/charr versions.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
The norn is very recent. She was with a pact squad who left her behind at their camp because she was ill. Her comrades were defeated, turned into risen, and came back and killed her. I remember I’ve encountered her twice, but I have no idea what map she’s on, and without a name or anything I can’t find her on the wiki. I think I ran into her on the way to a greatest fear story step, so maybe Mt. Maelstrom? Sparkfly Fen?
Ran around a little trying to find her, and it was a bit surreal to stumble on this event for the first time! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Solve_the_mystery_of_the_haunted_marsh
We’re going to devote our energies to sports, gardening, all the cultural pursuits;
in fact, we’re going to put the goons to sleep.
Meanwhile – we dig.
in fact, we’re going to put the goons to sleep.
Meanwhile – we dig.
Right, Aliyana. I’d forgotten about her. Good catch.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
isnt Aliyana a human? (not sure if you can make norn that short or with that hair)
also to add there are other times where spirits are angry and linger because of zhaithan using their body as risen. (something that cant actually happen to sylvari)
(edited by Deleena.3406)
I guess a mixture of theory 1 and 3?
It’s full of spoilers bellow about personal story, season 2 and HoT…and sorry for my English and complicated writing
[spoiler]Well according to what we learned in HoT that the mordrem are just clones from the corpses that Mordi could get his hands on…
It could be that the sylvari are the clones of Ronan and his family(and the other villagers that were murdered by the mursaat) cause Ronan planted the seed of the Pale tree in the exact same spot as the villagers/his family were buried. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ronan) (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Grove)
I mean it could be that the pale tree used the available corpses to produce dragon minions but thanks to the fact that Mordi hadn’t awakened yet the “minions” were nurtured by the Pale tree itself according to Ventari’s ideals thus making the Sylvari strongwilled(which later helped them resist Mordi’s call).Additionally as we see in the Sylvari personal story when “where life goes..” is chosen, Malyck resembles our Sylvari but he is not like them as he doesn’t have any connection with his tree. That could be simply the fact that his tree wasn’t educated to hold ideals and it is simply awaiting for its master to awake without interacting with its offspring. But the Pale tree in contrast to the other trees (thanks to Ventari’s teachings) cares about them and disseminates his teachings to them making them beings with a mind of their own (partially). [/spoiler]
So…I believe we should treat the Sylvari as a body of souls and thoughts(—->the dream) with the Pale tree acting as its caretaker
They might not have individual souls but fragments of souls(the villagers’ maybe idk) which grow larger as they experience more of the world and when they die the fragments simply return.
It could be that the Pale tree is reaching out a “hand”(lending a fragment but without losing connection with it) when a sylvari is born which allows the tree to explore the world and gain exp and when the sylvari dies the “hand”/fragment simply loses it’s vessel and returns to occupy a new one(like the reincarnation cycle).
Well I’m not a lore expert so I will appreciate it if my mistakes are pointed out (^-^)
There are now thousands of sylvari, so I highly doubt that they’re all clones of the village the Pale Tree was buried on top of – the chances of there being thousands of humans in that village is beyond unlikely. And while we do have NPCs who share appearances, this is mechanical.
Elder Dragons don’t have to be awake for new minions made to be without free will. Mordremoth’s waking state is irrelevant to the mental state of sylvari.
And mere teachings alone cannot give a dragon minion/champion free will either.
And none of that really touches the notion of sylvari having souls.
The Dream is described at the end of HoT as a mindscape so it’s unlikely to relate to souls (unless ArenaNet is taking the ancient Greek approach to minds of souls – being that they oft treated them as one and the same – which they’ve given no indication of). And there’s no indication that souls can even be fragmented.
Would make more sense in your theory to just say they have souls and they reincarnate, and not that the souls come from anywhere in specific.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Oh…:-/ sorry for being out of topic… I got carried away…^-^
anyways…thanks for correcting me!!