Guild Wars 2

It’s not just Norn names: is Caudecus’s daughter’s name (Demi) pronounced Demmy or d’Mee? In the same conversation there are NPCs using different pronunciations.

All names and non-English words could do with a pronunciation guide that the voice actors can draw on. Mind you, so could some English words, unless “dossil” is a valid US pronunciation of “docile”.

/nitpick

Despite Owl’s apparent death (was that reference to “hope” hinting at more than just the survival of the of the Norn through Owls’ sacrifice, hmm?) I did an event cycle “Protect the Owl shaman while she banishes the Dragon totem” last weekend, and Owl’s shaman seemed quite active.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protect_the_Owl_shaman_while_she_banishes_the_Dragon_totem

I have a long-haired Mesmer (sounds like a type of house cat), and the level of clipping is mostly acceptable. The exceptions are the pieces with stand-up collars, like the Stately armor, where the hair goes right through the collar.

Necroing this thread because I have the light coat, and I’d really, really like the bottom half to go with it.

In PvE the set is the light Stalwart’s armor, in particular:
- Stalwart’s Coat http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stalwart%27s_Coat
- Stalwart’s Pants http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stalwart%27s_Pants
These pieces are apparently offered as storyline rewards.

When I got the coat I didn’t realise it was unusual, but with trying to put together scholar armor to suit a more demure character this became one of my regularly-transmuted items. It looks as though I missed the pants when they were offered to me, and since the piece seems to be Soulbound on Acquire I’m currently stuck… but ever hopeful that there will be a way at some stage.

There’s a niche for more scholar clothing for human and Norn women that’s somewhere between “I’m just doing a little light mining on my way home from belly-dancing class” and “I found this sack in a Dredge mine”. This set is one of the options in that niche (probably nearer the Dredge end, but at least it has shape!).

It does make a difference: some NPCs treat you differently because of it.

I spent a bit of time wondering why two characters in a party together had different dialog options, before working out that my “Barbaric” warrior was teamed with a much more peaceful person. We probably caught this only because our computers are side-by-side, though, and we could look over each other’s shoulders at the options.

The world responds slightly differently to you depending on how your character’s history shows you tend to deal with things. It’s one of the reasons you can get a noticeably different experience of the game from starting a new character.

Official info: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality

If norms don’t dwell on the past, who tells their stories?

I’ve commented in on this in the other threads about it, but the female Sylvari yelping effect is the reason my Sylvari is male. I like having sound on for the cues it gives me, especially in combat, and couldn’t face the prospect of that noise all the time.

I suspect you’re both right: it certainly doesn’t seem to be a strong theme if it is one.

Thinking about timelines, though, I note that according to the wiki article on Norn “A norn might live to 120 and maintain their good health and vitality for a long time, though very few die of old age.” That suggests to me that it’s quite possible for people around now to be the children of people who were pushed out of the Far Shiverpeaks, complete with tales their parents told them. (It’s also possible for today’s norn to be the g-g-g-g-grandchildren of Norn who left: we don’t give enough playtime to the inter-generation complexities of a species that can be vigorous (and, presumably, reproductively active) for what might well be six of its own generations.)

The idea that Norn cultural ties to place or climate are less strong than the importance of building one’s story is something I’m only now beginning to understand fully. It does make me wonder who will tell some of the stories, but it’s a fascinating premise for development.

I suspect it’s likely that the current voice is moderate for Norn women.

Yes, if resources were no issue I’d love to have a choice of voices for my characters. I wouldn’t mind the ability for fans to record their own versions and mod them in. I don’t see either of those happening.

My only Sylvari is male, precisely because the yelping of the female in combat drives me nuts (and I do want to keep sound on because it gives me cues about aggression). Changing that one sound would make a female Sylvari tolerable for me.

Olaf, my theory is “So they can wear the game’s shared, but gendered, armor”, combined with “Marketing told us that players wouldn’t relate to a species of androgynous neuters”.

Is there evidence that “exile” is a theme for the Norn people displaced from the Far Shiverpeaks? Longing for the true home? “Next year in the Shiverpeaks”? “We will hunt once again in the land of our ancestors”?

I haven’t seen it and am wondering if it’s a plausible strand of Norn cultural identity.

Is the restriction on guesting between NA and Euro servers a temporary stage as you sort out the issues?

If it’s a stepping stone, I’ll be happy and patient. If it’s the way the future looks, I admit that I’d be disappointed, since that was most for the point of guesting for me (and as an Oceanic I have occasional ping weirdness either way).

To humans, I imagine Norns are like large, super-stimulus humans, and I could understand the fascination (even if it’s sometimes mixed with apprehension).

Imagine a human noblewoman bringing a Norn male partner to her first big social event post-breakup, then murmuring to her intrigued and somewhat horrified friends that Norns are “So manly…”.

I’m finding it harder to tell what Norns might see in humans, though. Unless the human has a prominent story I’d expect that the Norns in any Norn-Human relationships were probably young or low-status.

I agree that a mostly-oral tradition seems fitting for Norn, but I think they actually have documents. One of the typical items of furniture in Norn buildings is a type of rack which seems to hold rolled scrolls.

Zaxares.5419:

I imagine that female Norn are captured and given to the Sons of Svanir for use as playthings/breeders. There is a conversation between two Sons of Svanir in Hoelbrak (I think?) about what to do with female Norn, and one of them was arguing that they’d still need to keep women around in order to make new Sons of Svanir.

Can you track down the dialogue for this? The one I recall comes fairly early in the Norn personal storyline, where one Son of Svanir asks another how they’ll make more Sons of Svanir without any women, and the other responds with something like “… curse your logic”.

My impression from what I’ve seen of the game and the lore is that the Sons don’t keep women around. I’ve found no evidence that the Sons keep, or allow, women around for domestic work or sex (and I’ve had an eye out for it), while the recruitment of Sons of Svanir from the general Norn population is both shown and discussed. The comments the Sons make to and about women give me more the sense that they want to be manly men, doing manly things with other men (and dragons), and that contact with women isn’t something they look for. I wonder if some players make human assumptions about Sons of Svanir wanting to show dominance over servile women that don’t translate to Norn culture, maybe?

That said, I don’t have the full picture, and one clear piece of dialogue could change all this. I’m keen to learn more.

Tarn, I think the difficulty — and the endeavour — here is precisely about trying to get inside Norn mindspace. They’re not human; they’re not the animals whose spirits they follow; so what are they like? How would you suggest we go about this?

As an example, I’ve heard varying things about what ‘counts’ for a legend. Does infamy count equally with more positive renown? If you’re comparing the legends of a mighty hunter, an oathbreaker, a fine crafter, a negotiator and someone renowned for their looks, how do you tell whether those legends are “equal in worth” so a mating wouldn’t be a mis-match?

Reading comprehension failure on my part: you are correct.

Thanks for that, Nike. I’d heard that Owl had teachings about family, but hadn’t seen them before. (Link.)

So Norn individualism and ideas of success are tempered somewhat: kindness modifies strength, and family company modifies hunting-success workaholism. I’m still puzzling over the likely unintended social side effects of the custom that the hunter eats last, especially in a culture where it seems you can easily leave a group and coalesce into another group with a more favourable ratio of hunters-and-their-kin to people-being-fed.

The idea that you shouldn’t fool around with someone whose story is not of equivalent worth to your own has me — as a human player — shaking my head and saying “You mean, doing something particularly impressive puts me above my cohort and therefore means I’m less likely to get laid?”. I suspect that young Norns, just starting out on building their stories, might be quite willing to blur the boundaries if it gets them a wider range of people to be impulsive and experimental with, especially when drunk. We do come back to my earlier questions about Norn libido, though: maybe they’re just not particularly driven in that way. Or maybe they are and the heavy drinking and fighting are displacement activities because there’s no one suitable around to bed.

Drawing on the spirit patterns for Norn behaviour can be a bit tricky. Among the Wolf-called, do only dominant, pack-leading pairs get to reproduce? Animal bears and snow leopards are solitary, meeting only to mate and then going their own ways: their concepts of fatherhood don’t seem to extend past conception. What we hear from Norns suggests that Norns have a pretty strong idea of fatherhood, though, so I’m wondering how the different Spirit and Nornish models might pull on a Norn called by Bear or Snow Leopard. (“I’m a Snow Leopard: sorry, but I just can’t commit.”)

What’s your evidence that Norns use matronyms? Jhavi Jorasdottir is the only NPC I’m aware of with one. Since she’s a Vigil guard I admit to wondering if that’s a chosen political statement rather than a statement of descent: the timeline means she’s clearly not Jora’s actual daughter, and I thought Joraskin or Jorakin would be more likely as a marker of descent, no? Against that we have the more usual -dottir names formed with men’s names -- Gyda Oddsdottir and Ingun Grimsdottir — and the remaining one that I can’t pick because I’m not familiar with simple “El” as a real-world Nordic name for either sex, Karijn Elsdottyr (are there Dutch Norns?). We could decide in our extensions of lore to give daughters matronyms, but I’m not seeing canonical support for it as standard practice.

I’ve asked earlier about the significance of the stead of orphans, and whether it indicates that Norns won’t typically foster the children of dead parents. There’s potentially something quite interesting there about Norn social limits for when something becomes “not my problem”.

The public would be their community: the people they interact with in their band, and perhaps whatever count as neighbours and trade-partners. In a less individualistic society that community might support them, and also enforce social norms in various ways. In Norn society I’m really not so sure.

— How might Norns distinguish between “We’re just fooling around” and “Yes, we’re partners”?

— How might men decide which kids to acknowledge as theirs? (This is a matter of social fatherhood as much as biological paternity, but in a culture which uses patronyms it’s usually pretty important.)

— What might happen when either parent neglects the raising of their kids?

I’m still thinking about the deeper issues here and developing my own ideas of Norn values and relationships. In the meantime, though, I’ll throw in links to the dialogues from the dynamic events in northern Dredgehaunt Cliffs involving Myr and “Veteran Potential Mate”:

Beat some respect into Myr’s potential mate

On event start.

Veteran Potential Mate: “How dare you!”
Brandulf: “This day just keeps getting worse.”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Brothers! Come fight beside me!”

On successful completion.

Myr: “Get outta here!”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Bah, I’m done with this.”
Brandulf: “Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Time to leave.”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Fine. I’ll go stay with my Svanir brothers; they know how to live as real men.”
Myr: “Not a chance. Once I might have come with you, but you’re not the same man I married. I’m staying here.”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Your place is with me! By my side!”
Myr: “You’ve been listening to those fools of Svanir for too long. I decide where my place is—and whose side I stand by. And that is not you. Not now.”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Fine. But you’ll regret this.”

Veteran Potential Mate then goes off to talk to his Svanir recruiter. If you interrupt things there you get this:

Rescue the hunter before the Sons of Svanir complete their ritual

Before event starts.

Veteran Dragon Shaman: “Welcome, brother. What brings you to our lodge?”
Veteran Potential Mate: “I seek power. I’m tired of those who show me no respect and those who don’t appreciate my greatness.”
Veteran Dragon Shaman: “Embrace Dragon. Allow his power to flow through you. He will make them pay for their insolence.”
Veteran Dragon Shaman: “Are you ready to join Dragon’s brood? We can start the ritual now.”
Veteran Potential Mate: “Wait! I’m not sure yet.”

After successful completion.

Veteran Potential Mate: “(groan) You saved me. (sigh) What a fool I’ve been. I need to get back to the lodge and apologize.”

I’m still confused about the “Potential” aspect of “Veteran Potential Mate” combined with Myr’s statement that he “not the man I married”, but I’m assuming he’s her once-and-potential mate.

Does there need to be a ceremony or public declaration to make a recognised mate-bond? We know there can be a feast with boasting, but what’s the status of what historically would have been private marriages? Does there need to be a ceremony or public declaration to dissolve a mate-bond?

And, since this is tied in with Norn views on all types of relationships, what’s the deal with the Norn in the area behind the Bear caves who had a falling out with one of Knut’s sons and finally sorted it out in some sort of symbolic manner by leaving him flowers in order to get back into his good graces and, from memory, the Wofborn? Ideally, it’d be possible to get into the headspace enough to understand intuitively the significance of the wreath and the actions taken with the wreath. We get an explanation in that case, but I sometimes envy the NPCs their script-writer-given certainties.

On men, this armor looks like (fancy, over-the-top) Nornish armor. I’d like that look for my female warrior. Instead I’m probably going from my transmuted reinforced scale to Draconic, and then looking around at mix-and match options to try to feel both Norn and armored on a female character.

Norn running animations can look like they’re moving in slow motion or stepping very bouncily. Those big bodies travel at the same speed as Sylvari or Asura, so the cadence of their steps is slower.

There are some clipping issues, but I’m mostly avoided them so I’m not good at remembering which ones I had to dodge. Nothing excessive, I think.

There are threads around on the Hulk vs Barbie aspects of sexual dimorphism among Norns: that’s one of the easiest things to see at a glance and work out out how you feel about it.

Some people have strong reactions to the voice acting for female Norns. If you think you might be one of them I’d suggest “auditioning” the voice with a sample character. Personally, having my max-height Norn warrior sound like Ivanova is just fine with me, but my young, relatively quiet Norn ranger requires me to use my imagination in the voice scenes.

I see a lot of Norn warriors and rangers around. They’re a good fit lorewise, and the animations seem okay. That said, just about any combination could be justified if you put your mind to it. I’ve recently run into two Norn engineers who seem to bring Norn vitality and love of making big bangs to their work with explosives. Possibly the hardest to explain would be a Norn thief, who might choose to ditch the “thieving” aspect and concentrate on Snow Leopard’s stealth or Raven’s cunning.

I sort of envy players of male Norns for their gear. There’s a grounded solidity to it, mixed with the occasional senseless grandeur of pieces like the cultural T3 stag helm, that’s appealing. The women’s equivalents are often… not so grounded or so grand. Have a look through one of the armor gallery sites to see what catches your eye. You really need only one set of skins, and getting that set can be a useful game goal.

Having recently followed a fascinating lecture series about human behavioral biology, my head is full of ideas like this one: primatologists have found they can consistently tell whether a species is a pair-bonding species or what they call a tournament species (where males compete, gorilla-style, to be top male in the group) by the relative sizes of the males and females. Pair-bonding species tend to be around the same size. Tournament species tend to have males markedly larger than females. Humans are somewhere in the middle, which explains quite a lot.

Norns are… more sexually dimorphic than humans, which would put them further towards the tournament end of the scale. But this is a fantasy species in a fantasy world, and my real-world observations and logic don’t necessarily follow here (although they do still condition how I respond to the species).

So… what are the most basic groups in Norn society? The mate-bond with kids, equivalent to our nuclear family? The stead-band, with some level of division of labour and communal child-rearing? I don’t know.

Snippets that I’m trying to reconcile:

— We hear of the concept of Norn “mating”: a socially-recognised pairing of people of equal renown, marked by feasting and boasting and the wish that the couple might never hunt alone again.

— When we have information about kids’ parentage I think the parents are always described as having been “mates”. I’d be very interested in exceptions to this.

— Contrary to Jora’s wedding blessing about never hunting alone, we have at least two examples of mated couples where one stays home (to look after the kids or to run Hoelbrak) while the other hunts for long periods.

— There’s an NPC conversation in Hoelbrak where a woman says she was asked to help a guy raise his kids (I can’t remember whether it’s stated that their mother was away hunting or had died), and that “it’s an honor” and “he’s lonely”.

— In the Wayfarer Foothills there’s a renown heart where one of the jobs is to keep the kids occupied with snowball fights because their mother is away hunting and their father is a bit stressed. Where’s the stead, in all this? If it’s an honour to help raise someone else’s children, why doesn’t the whole stead take it on? Or is it the sort of honour that counts only if it attaches to a particular name and can become part of that person’s individual legend?

— In the north of Dredgehaunt Cliffs there’s a stead of orphans. They seem to survive on their own with help where possible from the nearby Raven shaman. Why? Does the idea of individual responsibility mean that other steads won’t take in extra mouths to feed?

I’m trying to get a grip on what drives Norns in their interactions with each other. Part of that is, yes, whether they have sex or reproductive sex outside of the mate-bond, but it’s also how children are raised, how labour is divided, and whether someone who is injured so they can’t do whatever work they used to do has any social support. Will a crippled hunter starve, or is that when they might take up a skaaldic role?

Who feeds shamans and skaalds?

groan

But seriously….

Necroing this thread because I’ve been wondering about this myself.

To generalise a bit, Norns seem to be highly impulsive binge drinkers, and from one of the personal story lines it’s apparently not unusual to have no recollection of what you did at a moot. If they were humans I’d expect either quite a few unintended and fairly random pregnancies or some form of birth control. Yet in all the examples I can think of where Norns are described or shown as parents, they’re established as “mated”, even if one partner is currently dead or off on an extended hunting trip.

Some possibilities among many:

— Norns simply don’t fancy anyone not proven to be of equal status, and it’s only rarely (or by conscious management to equalise legends) that they meet someone who appeals.

— It takes some time, and the sort of regular company and hunting together that’s mentioned in Norn marriages, for Norns to synchronise with each other in such a way that they’re fertile together.

— Norns take the local equivalent of emergency contraception with their hangover cures as a regular thing.

Any ideas? It’s possible that the independent status-conscious thing means Norns lead low-libido lives pursuing immortality primarily through their own legends, etc… but I find it hard to get my head around that in a people who have “passionate” as one of their keywords (and who seem to demonstrate such exaggerated super-stimulus secondary sexual characteristics, although that’s the view of a human player).