Guild Wars 2

hey,

i came across several human graveyards, plaques and monuments across Tyria. are the humans the only ones who burry their dead? i don’t recall seeing any Charr graveyard.

Asura cremate their remains (revealed in several old lore posts and in GW:EotN), I know there are norn graves, and as for sylvari and charr, I have no clue.

Norn may use “sky burials”, a type of burial where the remains of the deceased are set out in the open, and left for scavengers/predators to devour as a way of “returning to nature”. A lot of Norn also tend to go on one “last big hunt” as they get old, with the intention of going out in a blaze of glory.

Sylvari most likely bury their dead directly in the soil to let them return to the earth. It’s likely that, due to the fact that their memories are sent back to the Pale Tree, they also place less emphasis on death and the afterlife, since they know that their life experiences will live on in the Dream even after death, giving them a kind of immortality.

It’s not known what kind of funerary rituals the Charr practice, but given that we have never seen any Charr graveyards, and their pragmatic nature, they probably just cremate the bodies and spread the ashes into the fields as fertiliser for animal feed.

In the charr personal story, your warband has a member called Howl the Brazen.
SPOILER: he dies pretty soon, and at the start of the order related quest line, you have to travel to his gravesite, just to discover that his body is missing. He was definitely burried, the whispers representative charr even comments “Either someone dug up your friend, or he dug himself out.” So they do seem to burry their dead, though it is strange that there are apparently no cemeteries or gravestones or such. Maybe most are burried in mass graves? I think that would fit such a militaristic race.

Here’s an interesting passage from ‘Edge of Destiny’:

‘[…]
Logan returned to the forest, gathered another armful of wood, and dumped it on the other side of the canyon. Rytlock stepped up to him, thrusting his sword into the pyre and igniting it. Then he went to the other pyre and did the same.
“All right, then,” the charr said. "Let’s get to work."
He sheathed the blade.
The two foes turned their backs on each other and went to gather their dead. Logan knelt above each of his fallen friends, speaking a prayer to Grenth and kissing their foreheads. Rytlock meanwhile knelt above his comrades and sang an ancient war song of the Blood Legion. He cradled the head of each warrior just as the primus of their fahrar had first cradled them—“First breath to last…”
The man and the charr hoisted the fallen and carried them to the pyres and bedded them in flame.
[…]’

Here we see they don’t always bury their dead. This is an exception of course, since they were on the field and didn’t have the possibility of burying them.

Cerbeius.7129:

Here’s an interesting passage from ‘Edge of Destiny’:

‘[…]
Logan returned to the forest, gathered another armful of wood, and dumped it on the other side of the canyon. Rytlock stepped up to him, thrusting his sword into the pyre and igniting it. Then he went to the other pyre and did the same.
“All right, then,” the charr said. "Let’s get to work."
He sheathed the blade.
The two foes turned their backs on each other and went to gather their dead. Logan knelt above each of his fallen friends, speaking a prayer to Grenth and kissing their foreheads. Rytlock meanwhile knelt above his comrades and sang an ancient war song of the Blood Legion. He cradled the head of each warrior just as the primus of their fahrar had first cradled them—“First breath to last…”
The man and the charr hoisted the fallen and carried them to the pyres and bedded them in flame.
[…]’

Here we see they don’t always bury their dead. This is an exception of course, since they were on the field and didn’t have the possibility of burying them.

This could be excused by your statement of a short-on-time burial. It’s also possible that, like cultures in the real world, burial differs by the individual. Pyre burials in particular are often romanticized, and could be prevalent even in Human societies.

That doesn’t mean their grave won’t be marked, of course. As for the Charr not marking their graves with cemeteries, it’s possible that their culture simply doesn’t do that. They tend to be rather minimalist, more focused on the Charr, the Warband, the Legion over the individual. They may be memorialized more simply (the memorial wall in the Black Citadel for instance). No cemeteries means more space to build on.

Sylvari bury their dead, in the early personal story chapters, you can come across several grave markers for relevant characters.

There’s a little graveyard in Hoelbrak too, in the caves behind the bear hall.

That graveyard is for non-Norn who happen to have died in Hoelbrak though, I believe. I remember visiting there long ago after launch and all of the graves there belonged to humans and other races.

i totally forgot about that Charr grave. i guess that for the Charr, its 100% based on the situation. if they’re in war (which is apparently, most of the time) they’d burn their dead; when its “calmer” they’d burry them. this kinda explains why there are so few Charr graveyards.

Zaxares.5419:

That graveyard is for non-Norn who happen to have died in Hoelbrak though, I believe. I remember visiting there long ago after launch and all of the graves there belonged to humans and other races.

Yes and if you are a Norn you even get the Option to ask the NPC Ingun Grimsdottir wheter those people choose beeing burried over a pyre.