[Suggestion] Achievement in EoD - In search of Mhenlo's descendants

[SweetPotato.7456]

Mhenlo 

Given his reputation 😅 
I'd say he could have many descendants everywhere across Tyria.  
 

[costepj.5120]

Mhenlo was born nearly 300 years ago, or about 10 generations. A typical individual has around 1000 descendants across 10 generations, so tracking them all down could be a bit of a challenge. Maybe something to do while waiting for the next expansion?

[Poormany.4507]

Combined with what Cynn implies in Factions, that task may become even more difficult 😅

"What is it with this place? Every female around here seems to know Mhenlo...personally."

Edited January 1, 2022 by Poormany.4507

[Batel.9206]

What, you really think Cynn would let him be with anyone but her? 😜 Somebody would probably wind up being incinerated...either the unlucky other girl or poor Mhenlo himself.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

15 hours ago, costepj.5120 said:

Mhenlo was born nearly 300 years ago, or about 10 generations. A typical individual has around 1000 descendants across 10 generations, so tracking them all down could be a bit of a challenge. Maybe something to do while waiting for the next expansion?

Tyrians seem to not be quite so prolific as we only seem to have a small handful of descendants from GW1 characters seen throughout GW2.

Come to think of it, do we even ever see Tyrian families with more than 3 or 4 children? And when we do meet famous people's siblings, half of them tend to die off (e.g., Dylan, Belinda)... Huh.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

42 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Tyrians seem to not be quite so prolific as we only seem to have a small handful of descendants from GW1 characters seen throughout GW2.

Come to think of it, do we even ever see Tyrian families with more than 3 or 4 children? And when we do meet famous people's siblings, half of them tend to die off (e.g., Dylan, Belinda)... Huh.

Hey, who's to say that a plurality of those descendants don't themselves have siblings and several cousins, most we run into don't give us any details for or against this possibility. 
Far as the number of children being born goes a lot of why people tried to have so many kids was due to the high mortality rate of said children, they were trying to beat the odds, and I'm inclined to think that a world with actual healing magic would have much lower mortality rates.

 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

6 hours ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Hey, who's to say that a plurality of those descendants don't themselves have siblings and several cousins, most we run into don't give us any details for or against this possibility. 

I imagine if, say, Kossan had siblings or cousins that he knew about, his defining feature wouldn't be "descended from Koss" but something else, or at the very least he would have brought it up when meeting Koss while they talked about family.

It's kind of humorous how few the main cast talk about family, beyond parents or sometimes one or two siblings. Marjory has the largest family, with at least one other sister and a mother living in Shaemoor. Taimi being the obvious orphan exception.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I imagine if, say, Kossan had siblings or cousins that he knew about, his defining feature wouldn't be "descended from Koss" but something else, or at the very least he would have brought it up when meeting Koss while they talked about family.

It's kind of humorous how few the main cast talk about family, beyond parents or sometimes one or two siblings. Marjory has the largest family, with at least one other sister and a mother living in Shaemoor. Taimi being the obvious orphan exception.

Well then it kinda says something about a lot of the writers both new and old that they've missed this aspect of world building because single or two child families being the overwhelming norm isn't sustainable for of the races which how incredibly dangerous life in Tyria is even with healing magic.

[Batel.9206]

3 hours ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

....which how incredibly dangerous life in Tyria is even with healing magic.

I think you may have hit on it. Tyria is ridiculously dangerous no matter where you are. You walk out into the fields of Queensdale, for example, and bandits, drakes, centaurs, boars, pony-sized spiders, etc. are all gunning for you - not to mention all of the specific racial enemies (Nightmare Court, old Flame Legion, Sons of Svanir, and others) that will gladly attack in overwhelming force. Places like Elona are even worse. And then there's the dragon minions.... Sure, some of that must be excused due to game mechanics, but only some. It's quite possible that the average family for most races does have a large number of children...it's just that most of those children get killed at some point (whether in childhood or early adulthood), and thus only a few are actually able to have families of their own.

That, and humanity was (at one point) described as a dying race. They were fighting a losing war against centaurs, bandits, and everything else, and they knew it. Their population was dropping at an alarming rate. I don't know if that's still the case, or if it's ever been acknowledged in later stories, but it was there.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

15 hours ago, Batel.9206 said:

I think you may have hit on it. Tyria is ridiculously dangerous no matter where you are. You walk out into the fields of Queensdale, for example, and bandits, drakes, centaurs, boars, pony-sized spiders, etc. are all gunning for you - not to mention all of the specific racial enemies (Nightmare Court, old Flame Legion, Sons of Svanir, and others) that will gladly attack in overwhelming force. Places like Elona are even worse. And then there's the dragon minions.... Sure, some of that must be excused due to game mechanics, but only some. It's quite possible that the average family for most races does have a large number of children...it's just that most of those children get killed at some point (whether in childhood or early adulthood), and thus only a few are actually able to have families of their own.

That, and humanity was (at one point) described as a dying race. They were fighting a losing war against centaurs, bandits, and everything else, and they knew it. Their population was dropping at an alarming rate. I don't know if that's still the case, or if it's ever been acknowledged in later stories, but it was there.

To play devil's advocate, the game drastically shrinks down the scaling of Tyria for the sake of gameplay.

As such, it no doubt drastically upscales the scaling of Tyrian threats for the sake of gameplay too.

The Nightmare Court canonically from a dev's statement only makes up approximately 15% of the sylvari population, but discounting player characters, they far exceed friendly sylvari NPCs by at least 5x.

It's also hard to imagine that the Wardens, Seraph, etc. would be so incapable of taking down villain hideouts that are a literal stone throw's away from town with how obvious these hideouts are if the townsfolk were in perpetual threat from them.

More than that though, there wouldn't be enough time for people to become artists, writers, scholars, etc. if the threat level so drastically exceeded local protection capability either. Society advances based on how low the threats to their livelihood exists. The fact that Divinity's Reach has such an exorbitant amount of casual jobs that aren't farming, trading, and fighting showcases that the actual threat level isn't nearly as great as it comes off from gameplay.

If humanity was truly on the brink of destruction with population dropping at an alarming rate from the Centaur War, then Divinity's Reach would be a highly militarized city-state, not with leisure 26/7/365 carnival in half the city.

The start of the game depicted humanity as having a slow decline not a rapid one. Which implies its population was going down, yes, but not at an alarming rate, but because several cities and nations had fallen slowly over the past 300 years..

Edited January 3, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[The Greyhawk.9107]

I'm the first to admit that the in-game world doesn't reflect the exactly Narrative world, but it is still a decent measuring stick for getting a general idea for these more nuanced details.  Tyria is unquestionably extremely dangerous, irrespective of which race someone belongs to, mortality rates are going to be significant across the board and Arenanet hasn't seemed to have (in my opinion) does enough within the narrative to show that people are having families large enough to at minimum compensate for those losses.