#gw2 lore

It's been years and I still enjoy and realize how good sylvari personal story was.

Firstborn knight without fear, taking bandit human kid as his squire?

On Wiki of Gold is a player-run wiki improvement project supported by ArenaNet with in-game gold that gets awarded to wiki editors for contributing to any article selected below. (You can read the Contribution Terms here. Note that all contributors to this project have to abide by these Contribution Terms and all contributing edits have to be done with a wiki account, meaning anonymous edits are disqualified.)

The GW2 Wiki is a fantastic resource, but while it's extremely useful, it's true that parts are lacking. So anet sponsors gold for people to update significantly underattended parts of the wiki, and contributors are encouraged to add any missing data (so long as it's supported by verifiable information).

Since the wiki itself is an entirely fan/player maintained project, it can't grow and improve without players actually going in and adding things they find missing. I've added missing dialogue myself in various places!

Let's start with the basics- they're the two most ignored races of the main 5 when it comes to lore. And often times, the interesting lore they DO have is hidden in the game.

A great example for asura would be the nuclear disaster (not literally, but it seems to be very similar) at Thaumanova. While there is the fractal, you only get the deep parts of the effect it has when you talk to the refugees around the area. I'd suggest reading @ratasum 's posts about Thaumanova, and besides that they've done quite a bit of digging on asura lore. You could probably get more on the little rats than what's on the wiki- spoiler alert, the wiki doesn't have a lot.

For norn, the lore of being shapeshifters and the lore of the spirits is really easy to miss. In fact, once you get to IBS, it's entirely possible to not even know norn could shapeshift until then if you didn't play one, hadn't read Edge of Destiny, hadn't talked to a whole lot of NPCs, which is a combo that's really easy to have. And according to a Jotun bard in Hoelbrak, norn used to be some of the most powerful magic weilders in Tyria.

Now: the norn, asura, migration, and loss of identity. Both norn and asura were forced out of their native homes by elder dragons. Both lost quite a bit of their language (in canon. My hc goes lalalalalalala I can't hear you). (Both are, also, fitted into tiny squares of stereotypes. Norn are stupid drunk barbarians, asura are sketchy mad scientists. Obviously, outside of main characters, when do we encounter norn and asura? The Svanir and Inquest, of course.)

What? They addressed this in the Icebrood Saga? A miracle! What is it? How do they do i- oh.

It's one conversation with Braham and Taimi arguing.

Are we ever going to mention this again? Nah.

It's also worth mentioning that norn and asura both have societies and cultures that are based solely upon achievements and respect, even if hunting a violent wurm is a bit different from making a scientific breakthrough. It is the same at its core.

Also less of a parallel and more of a perpendicular, norn are the biggest race and asura are the smallest.

The tragic thing about Guild Wars 2's World vs. World , is how it tries to portray everyone as heroes, regardless of whether they are actually doing good or not. You could have one side saying they are trying to cull the root of evil, and the other side saying they are defending their world from evil. In reality, however, the ones that ultimately triumph in this conflict are traders, warmongers, and opportunists profiting from it.

These are all headcanons and are based on the in-game lore. There is a great piece on the wiki about gender and sexuality in Tyria.

F: For the first entry in a new series, I’ve managed to get a guest on the blog. She doesn’t know what pride month is, had her head buried too deep in books about insects probably, but she’s here to talk about Charr, their views on gender and sexuality. Say hello Vesta.

F: Oh, she seems a little distracted. Vesta, are you there?

V: Whoa! Watch it pal. I was focused on this ancient Orrian mug. Who knows how old it is? What types of coral might have grown inside it? I have to know. To add it to the two hundred, fifty seven types of coral I’ve already catalogued.

F: That’s all well and good Vesta, but we agreed to write a post today.

V: That is true. Well, here goes.

Hai! It’s me, Vesta Lorepaw. Presenting you; Lore with Lorepaw! Today we’re talking about the Charr. Which is what I am, according to some. Though I was a cub the last time I set foot in any citadel.

Charr are dimorphic and are born as either male or female. But to Charr gender is as important as the colour of the sky. Provided you’re fighting for the legions they tend not to have a problem. In the past the Flame Shamans tried to keep all females out of warbands. That lasted a couple centuries, from Bathea Havocbringer 'til Kalla Scorchrazor, when the three other legions took over. Won at the Plains of Golghein. That’s all recorded history though. Anyone who’s read a book can tell you that. Here are a few things you might not know.

Polyamory is common among warbands. This is due to the nature of the Charr, being built for war. Relationships are often short lived with a Charr taking multiple partners at once if desired.

Asexuality and aromanticism are not inherently looked down upon by the legions. If a Charr is averse to sex though? That’s a cause for concern. All that matters is siring cubs. New soldiers for the fahrar. Avoiding that is seen as dereliction of duty. However, Charr like this help in other ways. As Primuses in the fahrar, for one.

Bisexuality and pansexuality are common with Charr often taking partners for the sole purpose of mating. This makes same-sex relationships between Charr more common than the other races.

Charr have been known to change genders from birth or, more likely, be agender, not identifying with any gender. Because of the lack of rigidity in gender roles, Charr have a lot of fluidity in how they can express their gender. Besides, Charr presentation often boils down to your legion issued armour. A binary only exists as a way for cubs to be sired and weaned. Outside of that, many Charr do not conform to a traditional gender binary.

Binary pronouns are often used to help identify partners for mating. Otherwise gendered pronouns don’t matter much to Charr. Using a spoken or written tongue like this is fairly new to us, anyway. Our ancestors having scratched trail signs into trees instead.

In my travels I’ve met a few Charr who are queer in their own ways including Fronis Darkstone and a friend of mine from the Ward, Vanak. As for myself, I'm not interested in sex or romance. To be honest, cubs scare me. Their stares are piercing as a dagger’s tip! It’s probably for the best that I've stayed clear of the legions.

Here's a non-exaustive list of the ways each playable race had been collectively tortured by each other and forces beyond that.

Humans (The Human People)

Humans are an introduced species, by gods they actually met and lived with. Those gods just fucken left one day. Went out for smokes and never came back.

Before they left, but while they weren't looking some humans got tricked into starting a cult by invisible ageless wizards who already lived in the world the humans moved to. This cult got tricked into killing a lot of people. Like war crimes worth of people.

Humans got war crimed again by Big Daddy Cat-people after they said "Oh Yeah?" one too many times. The gods were seemingly fine with this and didn't intervene.

As revenge for getting war crimed by the Char, the humans killed a whole city of their own people and chained their ghosts to that spot forever to haunt and kill anyone they met (cows and birds are allowed. Everyone else gets killed).

In a grand machivalien scheme a whole island of people was sunk into the ocean because the irony was too much. ("Let no one conquer this land" is a bit open ended, eh?)

One human did also manage to turn like 20 hectares of land and people into various types of stone by killing one guy in such a fucken cool way that he exploded.

Sylvari (The Plant People)

Within a year of springing fully formed into existence, when there was like 10 Sylvari total, two of them were kidnapped by knee-high mouse people and tortured and directed for a few years.

After being recognized as sentient and worth respecting the lives of, one of them glimpsed the underlying truth of reality and a dragon-god started whispering evil secrets into her mind so she did war crimes to everyone she could find.

The same dragon-god also brainwashed about 20-30% of all Sylvari to turn on their allies and kill them. For everyone else he just had them think "I should kill my friends" for about 2 weeks until the plot got to him.

They also learned they weren't peace loving curiosity sponges and were in fact evil minions as came out wrong and were missing the evil juice and they would always know what a bad day could do to them now.

Char (The Cat People)

A different set of non-invisible wizards (also not from this world) turned their whole civilisation into a misogynistic cult that stripped all females of rights and encouraged violent suppression of any dissenting thought. (The Char did violently kill all these guys later, we could all learn a JRPG lesson for the one race that managed to kill their god).

Humans did violently oppress them for a few hundred years though. And then after the Char did a war crime, they kept up the forever war for like another 20 years before the humans killed all their own people and made continuing the forever war really inconvenient.

In addition to killing their fake gods, they did also kill a lot of their own people responsible for enforcing the culture of misogyny and oppression.

Norn (The Fight People)

They did invent a misogynistic cult around some guy who hated his sister who was demonstrably cooler than him.

Did let a lot of other people from the other races die pointless deaths cause it wasn't a cool enough fight for them to get involved.

They did get to feel several of their gods they worshipped get killed in real time while they fled a fight they couldn't win.

Asura (The Morally Grey People)

Did torture those Sylvari on purpose for way longer than anyone would think necessary.

Did burocracy so poorly that it lead to the creation of what amounts to The League of Evil Scientists who do every evil science thing imaginable rather than do paperwork and get their studies peer reviewed.

Gods (The NPC People)

One of the gods was actually a human once. Who got her eyes cut out ironically. And then became a god of secrets and truth.

She got that spot by killing the previous god of secrets, who went mad after the other gods nailed him to a rock in the land of infinite torment and madness (no flaws in that plan).

They nailed him to a rock in the first place cause he wanted to intervene and give the humans more tools to protect themselves with (and make them less reliant on the capricious boons the gods gave out).