low level sylvari society

[Fipmip.7219]

How does this society function at the lowest level? someone has to rake the leaves, do the farming, water the plants. a lot of their infrastructure seems grown with magical means, so that covers a lot of the labour. but someone has to till the soil, plant the seeds, distribute food and resources, do plumbing (do sylvari pee and poo?) and be doctors and study medicine. does the queen pay them? do they get a wyld hunt to do it? is sylvari society a capitalist one where they get hired by eachother?and then who gets to be in charge of the armed forces and who has to do all the paperwork? do the soldiers get paid? feels like sylvari society is a little hollow on the lore side.

[Narcemus.1348]

Sylvari society is 25 years old at the start of the game. And 25 years ago there were 12 of them. So they don't have things figured out yet. They're still trying to figure out all of those sorts of things, but this far they've only just started creating an education system.

[draxynnic.3719]

There is a farming system (some of the hearts in Caledon are related to cultivation and harvesting) and a defence force (the Wardens). How exactly the economy works hasn't really been fully explained, but we can observe that they do at least have a concept of trading currency for goods and services, so that's probably how sylvari farmers, plumbers, doctors and so on are rewarded.

The Wardens seem to be organised by the Luminate of Day (Niamh, I think), but I'm not sure if there's been any indication of how they're funded. There isn't any indication of a formal tax system, so it could be that they're volunteers who fund themselves by other means when not on duty, or they might be sustained by donations from other sylvari who appreciate having some level of protection from Nightmare Court, Inquest, and assorted other threats in the area.

[Danikat.8537]

On 8/5/2024 at 1:25 PM, Narcemus.1348 said:

Sylvari society is 25 years old at the start of the game. And 25 years ago there were 12 of them. So they don't have things figured out yet. They're still trying to figure out all of those sorts of things, but this far they've only just started creating an education system.

I think this is a really important point. Sylvari society isn't nearly as structured as the others because it's so much newer.

There's also some other differences which are likely to affect their social structure, like the fact that they're all born as fully formed and largely autonomous adults so they don't need to worry about raising young like the other races do. Some sylvari choose to seek out education beyond what the Dream showed them, but they don't need years of care and support from parents and teachers. Also because they can't reproduce they don't really have any kind of family units.

But as @draxynnic.3719 said we can see sylvari farmers and guards in the game, and there's doctors (Menders) in the Grove and in some storylines. Some of them may well be driven to do that because of a Wild Hunt. Others might get into it out of curiosity or simply because it's something that needs to be done.

We don't have all the details about any society (for example Divinity's Reach would need a huge amount of logistics to keep it running, especially buying in food from the surrounding farm lands) but I think we can reasonably assume it works like in real life - so for example sylvari farmers sell their crops for coin and use that to buy products and services from other sylvari, or trade directly with their neighbours if that's more convenient.

[Kalavier.1097]

In terms of within the grove itself, it's probably communal without real charging of rent or services. but they do understand economy.

[Cyninja.2954]

Within this context it might be important to note that many essential are not present due to the dream and knowledge passed on from within it.

The entire structure around children/young-lings is non existent. Structures are grown. Specializations are "acquired" via basic knowledge passed on and relived within the dream before even waking.

Now as far as remaining essentials, wecan assume the Pale Tree herself governs necessity to some extent, just as she does ensure that every Sylvari is endowed with the basics of knowledge required (according to the wiki:"The Pale Tree herself ensures that each sylvari is then equipped with essential information, such as how to read, basic living skills, the tenets of Ventari's Tablet, and the assurance that she loves each of them").

Meaning some Sylvari are born with their goal being providing and improving on those necessities like gardening, field work, etc. Sounds unromantic to an adventurer type, but just as within regular society, many are just content and happy with giving their best day to day even on more minor jobs.

An interesting concept to theorize about though.

Edited August 7 by Cyninja.2954

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

On 8/3/2024 at 12:30 AM, Fipmip.7219 said:

How does this society function at the lowest level? someone has to rake the leaves, do the farming, water the plants. a lot of their infrastructure seems grown with magical means, so that covers a lot of the labour. but someone has to till the soil, plant the seeds, distribute food and resources, do plumbing (do sylvari pee and poo?) and be doctors and study medicine. does the queen pay them? do they get a wyld hunt to do it? is sylvari society a capitalist one where they get hired by eachother?and then who gets to be in charge of the armed forces and who has to do all the paperwork? do the soldiers get paid? feels like sylvari society is a little hollow on the lore side.

Sylvari who function as builders, smiths, and farmers go by the title of Gardener. Currently there is no distinction between those roles as they're all simply called the same title, as for all of them involve the role of growing and maintaining the soil, seeds, and plantlife - whether those plants become fruit bearers, houses, or weapons and armor.

Sylvari who function as doctors are Menders, and this is a catch-all term for all doctors, from those who manage the pods of "unborn" sylvari and helping the newly awakened sylvari accomodate, to those who heal injured or sick sylvari - there is no distinction (yet) between the sylvari equivalents of midwives, nurses, surgeons, etc.

Sylvari do go to the bathroom - devs confirmed that their poop takes the form of mulch, in fact. But few towns and cities in Tyria have plumbing and sewer systems - Divinity's Reach, Ebonhawke, Rata Sum, and Lion's Arch are the only ones confirmed with such in Central Tyria (though it's a high chance that charr cities as well as other major human and asura cities in Central Tyria also have sewers and plumbing, but not do all). It's unlikely that the Grove has any such plumbing system and they use the same system Vabbians do - kitten in pots and toss it over the side daily.

Sylvari do not have a queen so not sure why you're asking if the queen pays them - Jennah is the only queen in Central Tyria and they do not rule sylvari, and the Pale Tree is no queen. But there's no indication of a system of payment or taxation among the sylvari - sylvari just go into whatever profession they want to do. I imagine they probably run on a fairly socialistic system internally. I don't think there is any ambient dialogue about payment, which we can see in Rata Sum, Divinity's Reach, and Lion's Arch both old and new.

Many sylvari do get Wyld Hunts, but not all. I don't think an exact number or percentage was given but it isn't common, so <50% of sylvari population get Wyld Hunts, and very very few wake up with a Wyld Hunt at all (our PC is a special muffin for that alone, let alone a hunt to fight Elder Dragons).

Sylvari armed forces are called Wardens, they are led by one of the Firstborn, Niamh.

The fine pickings of society of any culture in GW2 is rather hollow on the lore side, arguably in GW1 too. ArenaNet has never been much to derail themselves on the nitpickeries of fine tuned notes unless it makes sense to bring it up in a dialogue. At least externally. It's also worth noting that all geographic locations and (friendly) populations are drastically scaled down for the sake of the game - particularly the "boring parts", as is common in video games in general; so farmlands are much, much, much smaller than they have any rights to be in-game and this is purely mechanical, not a reflection of the lore size of farmlands.

Edited August 7 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[draxynnic.3719]

On 8/7/2024 at 8:04 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

We don't have all the details about any society (for example Divinity's Reach would need a huge amount of logistics to keep it running, especially buying in food from the surrounding farm lands) but I think we can reasonably assume it works like in real life - so for example sylvari farmers sell their crops for coin and use that to buy products and services from other sylvari, or trade directly with their neighbours if that's more convenient.

Worth noting that there is some reflection of this in-game: there's some chatter in Divinity's Reach somewhere about the centaurs and it not being a siege, but we can't rely on the caravans like we used to.

And like Konig pointed out, most of the zones are, essentially, the interesting bits and a representative sample of what's there, they're quite a bit bigger than they're shown in-game (for example, the Fields of Ruin is about a day's travel from Ebonhawke to where Killeen died, and most of that wasn't crossing the Brand).

[Teknomancer.4895]

20 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Sylvari do go to the bathroom - devs confirmed that their poop takes the form of mulch, in fact.

🤨 

I'm not sure whether to be impressed at this level of detail, or disturbed that this is something they actually thought needed to be specified.

[Kalavier.1097]

1 hour ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

🤨

I'm not sure whether to be impressed at this level of detail, or disturbed that this is something they actually thought needed to be specified.

pretty sure it was a Q and A session and somebody asked about it in relation to if Sylvari needed to actually eat and such.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

4 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

🤨

I'm not sure whether to be impressed at this level of detail, or disturbed that this is something they actually thought needed to be specified.

As @Kalavier.1097 said, it was a Q&A session and someone asked about their eating habits, digestive system, and photosynthesis. The source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180218013636/https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/25iqrv/i_attended_the_gw2_china_beta_festival_heres_some/

Unfortunately we just have the cliffnotes of the response since it was an in-person event with apparently no recording.

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Worth noting that there is some reflection of this in-game: there's some chatter in Divinity's Reach somewhere about the centaurs and it not being a siege, but we can't rely on the caravans like we used to.

And like Konig pointed out, most of the zones are, essentially, the interesting bits and a representative sample of what's there, they're quite a bit bigger than they're shown in-game (for example, the Fields of Ruin is about a day's travel from Ebonhawke to where Killeen died, and most of that wasn't crossing the Brand).

Yeah the scale thing applies across the whole game (and to most other games too). But even allowing for that there's things we don't see at all, like shipments of food coming into the city or people coordinating the distribution and sale. Oddly enough the one place we do get a direct reference to that is Hoelbrak, where you can meet Kolijn Johansson, the city's Trade Administrator, but realistically all the cities (including the Grove) would have equivalents.

(It's a bit off-topic but even knowing games almost always do that, and why the in-game Dragon Brand was a bit of a let-down after reading Ghosts of Ascalon. Of course I didn't expect, and wouldn't want, whole zones of it, but being able to cross on foot in about 30 seconds without any enemies coming near me was anticlimatic.)

[Kalavier.1097]

39 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Yeah the scale thing applies across the whole game (and to most other games too). But even allowing for that there's things we don't see at all, like shipments of food coming into the city or people coordinating the distribution and sale. Oddly enough the one place we do get a direct reference to that is Hoelbrak, where you can meet Kolijn Johansson, the city's Trade Administrator, but realistically all the cities (including the Grove) would have equivalents.

(It's a bit off-topic but even knowing games almost always do that, and why the in-game Dragon Brand was a bit of a let-down after reading Ghosts of Ascalon. Of course I didn't expect, and wouldn't want, whole zones of it, but being able to cross on foot in about 30 seconds without any enemies coming near me was anticlimatic.)

Kolijn probably is visible because it's part of how Hoelbrek is a cultural evolution for the Norn, so it's a bit unusual currently. The whole network of lodges being small towns linked to Heolbrek is also new. DR, Rata Sum, and Black Citadel we'd just expect such a role to be filled naturally.

Though the dragonbrand part, yeah that's why I have told people that the Dragonbrand of path of fire and season 4 is actually more lore accurate then the rest of it. How it's all like that, constant storms and just being in it is being in serious danger.

[draxynnic.3719]

17 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Kolijn probably is visible because it's part of how Hoelbrek is a cultural evolution for the Norn, so it's a bit unusual currently. The whole network of lodges being small towns linked to Heolbrek is also new. DR, Rata Sum, and Black Citadel we'd just expect such a role to be filled naturally.

Though the dragonbrand part, yeah that's why I have told people that the Dragonbrand of path of fire and season 4 is actually more lore accurate then the rest of it. How it's all like that, constant storms and just being in it is being in serious danger.

Hypothetically, it could be that the brand in PoF is more dangerous because it's fresher, but yeah, the brand being basically the same as anywhere else except for the type of enemies faced was a bit of a letdown.

[DaZeeHero.5210]

if Sylvari benefit from the knowledge of all previous sylvari why are the Firstborns considered so special? I understand it being an honor to be first, as a firstborn child in real life, or at least historically in human culture its considered special in some way.

But as far as capabilities and knowledge, shouldn't later generations have the advantage?

[Fipmip.7219]

I did some more thinking, and I think considering there are no children, the logistics of caring for the populace is greatly reduced. sylvari come out knowing how to forage and grow food. since they are so self sufficient, there is not much in the way of hierarchy and power structure since each is capable of fairly easy independent living. It would be a lot easier to be independent as a human if you could just eat raw grass, grow your own clothes and drink the sun and rain. however, at the end of the day they are still sentient thinking and ambulatory creatures which require a lot of energy. Since there are so many of them and they replicate so quickly, even if they had half the footprint of humans it would scour the local ecosystem. 

this means they farm in addition to hunting and foraging (also why do they feed the pink moas in caledon forest?) That would imply there is sylvari hierarchy and leadership, since someone has to manage the attribution of resources. however, it seems at odds with what we can infer about sylvari. each generation takes knowledge from the dream and emerges as a capable adult. many sylvari strike out on their own and tour the world, feeding knowledge back to the dream. why then do sylvari make settlements? making a settlement requires backbreaking hard work and investment. humans do it for protection and a place to raise their own, or to exploit a local resource for profit. but sylvari need this to a much lesser degree. are these villages just made up of all the sylvari that are too timid to travel? are they made to do it by the pale tree in the interest of spreading out to not drain too many resources from one area? 

So this begs the question, what are the sylvari motivations? it seems in these early stages, sylvari are driven by exploration and curiosity. i think these first settlements are created by early generation sylvari that didn't know much about the world except how to survive. they provide stepping stones for sylvari travellers, but beyond that seem to have little purpose beyond just feeding and defending eachother. humans are individualistic and are mostly interested in doing well for themselves, either by working for someone else or being an entrepreneur. are sylvari the same way, or are they more interested in serving the pale tree? and how does one do that? and those that resist the pale tree, what do they want to do with their lives?

In the future, sylvari may become more industrious and seek to obtain resources. however, im not sure for what purpose. is it to protect and expand the reach of the pale tree? in human society, an equivalent is a peasant working for a monarch in order to expand/maintain the power of that monarch. but peasants are compensated for their work, thus preserving the human motivation to be well off. the thing that seems missing is the sylvari motivation. will sylvari be compensated for farming or mining rocks or making dye? doing these things is a reason to make settlements, around ore or fertile land. so i think what the question fully boils down to is whether sylvari are paid or are mind controlled into working for their society. since it seems otherwise, they should be far more nomadic and tribal in nature. as a side note, it would be interesting to learn how the soundless and the nightmare court provide for themselves.

[DaZeeHero.5210]

Much like humans I assume it varies from Sylvari to Sylvari.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

1 hour ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

if Sylvari benefit from the knowledge of all previous sylvari why are the Firstborns considered so special? I understand it being an honor to be first, as a firstborn child in real life, or at least historically in human culture its considered special in some way.

But as far as capabilities and knowledge, shouldn't later generations have the advantage?

That's the best part. They don't.

Sylvari wake up with a portion of the sum of the knowledge of all previous sylvari. The common analogy is like drawing a bucket out of a well. The well is that "knowledge of all previous sylvari" (or more accurately, it is the Dream - which exceeds the knowledge of all sylvari), and the bucket is the knowledge that an individual sylvari receives. Every time the bucket is filled, it has a different amount of water in it, and the water is different from the previous drawing of water.

Additionally, the "water" in said bucket isn't actual life experiences - it's the equivalent of reading a description in a book or watching a movie. Watching a documentary will be informational, but it will forever pale in comparison to actually having been part of what's covered in that documentary.

And by the time GW2 starts, the amount of knowledge a Firstborn has exceeds how much a single bucket's worth contains, not even getting to the point of actually experiencing the events.

So no, later generations don't have any advantage.

[DaZeeHero.5210]

Regardless theres no point in having a collective well of knowledge if theres not SOME advantage to having one. Maybe it doesn't improve individual sylvari much but its got to improve them as a whole over time.

Most older siblings don't act like jerks over that status- unless they are still dumb kids that is, which I guess Sylvari kind of are.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

Regardless theres no point in having a collective well of knowledge if theres not SOME advantage to having one. Maybe it doesn't improve individual sylvari much but its got to improve them as a whole over time.

Most older siblings don't act like jerks over that status- unless they are still dumb kids that is, which I guess Sylvari kind of are.

Well, there clearly is an advantage. Sylvari come out as functional adults with the equivalent of at least basic schooling. They don't need to spend over a decade just getting to that point like, say, new humans do.

But the sylvari who has that and several decades of actual life experience is still likely to be more knowledgeable about how the world works than a newborn.

[DaZeeHero.5210]

Firstborns also came out as functional, if Naive, adults

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

7 hours ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

Regardless theres no point in having a collective well of knowledge if theres not SOME advantage to having one. Maybe it doesn't improve individual sylvari much but its got to improve them as a whole over time.

Most older siblings don't act like jerks over that status- unless they are still dumb kids that is, which I guess Sylvari kind of are.

As drax said, there is an advantage. Mainly over other races and the lack of childhood. But this advantage doesn't make a newborn inherently smarter than the eldest sylvari, and never did.

And even if they have book smarts, they're still lacking in life experiences.

2 hours ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

Firstborns also came out as functional, if Naive, adults

Physically functional, sure.

But as you say: if naive. And they certainly were. As are most newborn sylvari - having book smarts doesn't make one less naive, per se.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, DaZeeHero.5210 said:

Firstborns also came out as functional, if Naive, adults

Yes. Newborn sylvari are probably coming out with better "childhood education" than the Firstborn, although the Firstborn still had some. But that doesn't trump the Firstborn having lived experience, especially since any additional knowledge from the Dream that the secondborn had likely came from the Firstborn.

It's worth noting that the Dream also doesn't seem to be purely a sylvari or even purely a Mordremoth thing, so there was probably some Dream learning even for the firstborn.

[DaZeeHero.5210]

There was for sure just that more gets added to the dream

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

While the dream is constantly swelling with experiences, it isn't getting any more sorted. The dreamers get their random mix of facts, emotions and memories - but it isn't guaranteed to make sense. 

Even worse - it isn't even guaranteed to work. Just as the sylvari npc in south Kessex tells us: she can't even remember her dream. 

Btw, most questions like this or how the society works are actually answered by npc (ambient) dialogue. Spend some time in the grove or Caledon.